Head of Content Development (Education)

Head of Content

About Us

Exam Papers Plus is one of the UK's best–known names in 11+ preparation. We have built a large bank of exam resources, mapped to subject, question type, skill and difficulty, and recently launched a learning platform that puts that material in front of children and parents in a guided way.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, we will extend this into several new areas at once – new content programmes across different subjects, age groups and assessment formats. Some are close to what we do today. Others will be new to the business.

About the Role

As Head of Content, you will own the quality, consistency and delivery of everything we produce, and build the editorial operation, freelance network and production system that let us run several content programmes at once without lowering the standard.

Expect three or four programmes running concurrently across unrelated subjects, each with its own specification, experts, deadlines and quality risks. Some build on existing relationships. Others will need a subject network, a brief and a process created from nothing. Switching between them cleanly, holding the detail in each and losing nothing in the handover is the single most important requirement of the job.

We are looking for someone organised and decisive who takes ownership rather than waiting for direction, who can hold a firm line on quality, and who is comfortable saying that something cannot be done in the time available, if it compromises quality. You will need a logical, systematic approach to how content is structured and tagged, and the ability to understand how metadata decisions affect how our systems find and present that content. You will need to be energised by variety and capable of switching between unrelated subjects several times a day without losing the thread on any of them. You will be comfortable picking up the phone to an expert you have never met in a subject you have never worked in, and credible enough to brief them.

You will report to the CEO, sit on the leadership team, manage a small in–house editorial team and hold your own freelance budget. You will inherit an existing question bank and authoring platform, but you will be the first person in the business whose sole responsibility is content quality and throughput.

What you'll be responsible for:

• Planning and running every programme in Linear, in stages with sign–off gates, so that anyone in the business can see where things stand without asking you.
• Owning the editorial standard and the review process that enforces it. Every question correct, on specification and consistent with the material around it. When something slips through, you fix the process, not just the question.
• Maintaining our style guides, question type definitions, skill taxonomy and difficulty descriptors, and making sure everyone applies them consistently.
• Strengthening the freelance relationships we have and, for new subjects, building a specialist network from scratch – finding and testing the right people, briefing them so their work fits our structure first time, and managing rates, contracts and performance within your budget.
• Designing and maintaining AI–assisted production workflows (we use n8n and Claude) for drafting, transformation, tagging and first–pass quality checks, so that a new programme runs on the existing process rather than being built by hand, and being clear about where AI cannot be trusted.
• Sizing and costing each new programme before we commit to it, and saying plainly what is achievable in the time available.
• Protecting the core 11+ business while new programmes are built, and making sure everything we produce is original and respects exam board intellectual property.

What you'll bring:

• Experience leading content, editorial or curriculum in an education business, assessment organisation, awarding body or educational publisher.
• A track record of running several unrelated content projects at once and delivering them. We will ask you to talk us through how you did it.
• Fluency in project management tools (we use Linear, ClickUp and Outline) and exceptional organisation and follow–through. Nothing gets dropped, forgotten or quietly delayed.
• A quality assurance mindset – you have designed and run review processes, you look for the pattern behind a failure, and you have an unusually high tolerance for detail at volume.
• Experience finding, assessing, commissioning and managing subject matter experts, including building an author network from scratch in a subject where you are not the expert.
• Current, practical experience designing AI–assisted content workflows (Claude, n8n or equivalents), not just using the tools, with a clear view of where they help and where they fail.
• Experience building or improving content processes rather than operating existing ones.

A background in assessment or exam content, experience taking content into a new subject or format, or formal project or quality management training would all help.

What's On Offer:

• GBP65,000 to GBP75,000 depending on experience.
• Permanent, full time, hybrid with two days a week in our London office.
• 28 days' holiday and 6% employer pension contribution.
• Eligibility for the group bonus scheme.
• A seat on the leadership team, reporting to the CEO.