Living Collection Manager

About The Role

We are excited to offer a unique and highly sought after opportunity for a passionate and skilled Living Collection Manager to join the team at the Arundel Wetland Centre.

The unique bird collection at Arundel contains some of the rarest waterbirds within Europe, ranging from Scoters, Scaley Sided Mergansers and Spectacled Eiders, making this an exciting and rewarding position set in the beautiful surroundings of the Arun Valley.

In this pivotal role, you will lead and manage the Living Collection team, overseeing the care and maintenance of our diverse living collection while ensuring exceptional standards of presentation you will also be involved in UK and European breeding programs to sustain some of the rare waterbirds within the collection. As the Living Collection Manager, you will be responsible for upholding the highest standards of animal husbandry and welfare, leading the team to continually enhance and maintain our exhibits whilst developing the team into highly-skilled and confident aviculturists. All this whilst engaging with our visitors on the importance of wetland wildlife conservation.

This is a permanent, full-time position, requiring you to work 37.5 hours per week, 5 days out of 7, including weekends and bank holidays.

About You

To join as our Living Collection Manager you'll bring:

• Proven management-level experience in a similar setting.
• Extensive background in large-scale visitor attractions with animal collections.
• Expertise in the care, feeding, and husbandry of birds and mammals.
• A passion for inspiring and motivating a team. In-depth knowledge of UK zoo legislation and animal welfare.
• A strong track record in innovative problem-solving.
• Excellent leadership and team-building skills.
• Experience in customer relations, public speaking, education.
• Proven experience initiating and developing creative animal projects.

If you are a dynamic leader with a passion for conservation and animal welfare, we would love to hear from you.

We reserve the right to close the advert early if we receive a sufficient number of applications from candidates who meet the required skills and experience. We therefore encourage early applications.

About Us

We’re WWT, and we’re on a mission to restore the super-powered ecosystems we call wetlands. There’s never been a more important moment for our work, and we’ve got some phenomenal people on the case.

Whether they’re taking a new visitor under their wing, or conducting ground-breaking research further afield, our team are second to none. And there’s nothing we love more than watching them soar.

Whatever you do here, you’ll be helping to restore wetlands and unlock their power. So, the only question left is, what role will you play?

Why you’ll love working at WWT

• Wake up every day knowing your work is helping to restore wetlands, and our world
• Be surrounded and inspired by our team of passionate, dedicated people
• 33 days annual leave (which goes up to 38 days after 5 years of service) – this includes bank holidays and you have flexibility to take those days whenever you want
• Free entry to all our wetland centres, including your family
• Free car parking and secure bike storage areas
• Colleague discount on shopping and memberships
• Cycle to work scheme
• Contributory pension scheme
• Life Assurance of three times your salary, for peace of mind for your loved ones
• Independent personal, workplace and financial advice from our Employee Assistance Programme

WWT is an equal opportunities employer and all applications will be considered solely on merit.