Job Description

Location: UK or Poland

(residents only – relocation and sponsorship not provided)

Role purpose

Taxonomy Lead is responsible for the design and maintenance of taxonomies and classification systems to organize English Language learning and teaching content resources, curricula, and assessment materials. This role ensures that British Council product development specialists, administrators (and in future, potentially clients) can easily discover and access content through structured categorisation and metadata standards aligned with educational frameworks. This role will develop and promote the internal skills and understanding of taxonomies to facilitate efficient content management and secure reuse of content and will develop new toolsets to tag, manage, monitor and store content effectively.

Role context

The role is part of a team accountable for the design, development, and performance management of the digital and analogue products that enable the [For Schools / Higher Education / Work] propositions. They ensure the right product mix, quality, and innovation to support the strategic direction set by the Proposition Directors. This team ensures products are commercially viable, scalable, and aligned with technology, delivery, and customer needs.​

Main accountabilities

Taxonomy design and development

· Develops and manages taxonomies for English language teaching, learning and assessment content, including courses, learning objectives, and assessment items.

· Develops strategies to implement taxonomies at corporate level to improve the organisation, archiving and reuse of content-based intellectual property.

· Collaborates with Research & Impact, Learning and Assessment Design, Content Creation and Product Management teams to ensure taxonomy strategy and toolsets support pedagogical goals and user experiences.

· Aligns classification systems with national and international educational standards (CEFR, local frameworks)

· Develops toolsets and systems that ensure visibility and onward monitoring of assessment item health in line with regulatory and secure assessment standards

· Designs and implements regular audits and taxonomy updates based on curriculum changes, portfolio upgrades and user feedback

· Creates an inclusive organisational culture, is aware of own biases and acts to mitigate against these. Ensures people are valued and treated equitably, with support for people’s well-being and mental health at all times.

Learning and Assessment Content Management

· Identifies, contracts with (in collaboration with Supplier Manager) and manages appropriate platforms for authoring, archive, management and retrieval of all assets, with appropriate security to minimise risks to British Council IP and 3rd party IP.

Relationship and Stakeholder management

· Collaborates with Intellectual Property Manager (D&T) and Legal colleagues to promote best practice in intellectual property management across E&E

· Ensures appropriate training and development is in place for internal and external staff (writers, editors, item writers) as required to use the defined content management and rights standards

Project Management/Commercial and resources management

· Monitors and reports on schedules and progress, budgets and resources for taxonomy projects

· Develops, trains and embeds tools, systems and supporting documentation within product and content teams to support best practice in content and asset creation, storage and use

· Responds to issues, requests in a timely manner to support speed-to-market and product effectiveness

Role specific skills

· Experience of designing and implementing taxonomies.

· Experience with GenAI as applied to content management

· Experience with authoring systems, digital products, digital libraries, and taxonomy management tools.

· Familiarity with educational standards and frameworks (CEFR, Bloom’s Taxonomy, etc)

· Excellent analytical, organizational, and communication skills.

Role specific knowledge and experience

Minimum / essential requirements

· Strong understanding of taxonomy principles, metadata standards, and educational content structures.

· Ability to work collaboratively with curriculum and assessment specialists, and technical teams.

· Experience of managing assets, databases, archive systems

· Full time residency in the UK or Poland with unlimited right to work

Desirable

· Degree in Library Science, Information Management or related field.

· Experience of ELT assessment and learning products/publications

· Project management qualification

· Experience of rights and IP management

· Experience of procuring goods and services from external suppliers, negotiation

Language Requirements

Written and verbal fluency in English.

British Council values and behaviours

The text below is standard and will appear unless changed or added to.

British council values and behaviours are applicable across our organisation, in all roles and at all levels. They are important because they say what we stand for at the British Council and help us to deliver our strategy. We use them to guide our decision making, as well as guiding how we treat one another and the people we work with. These will be assessed in the selection process. Our values are:

Open and Committed; Expert and Inclusive; Optimistic and Bold.

Unit: English & Exams / Product / Content Strategy

Work style: hybrid

Pay band: 8

Annual salary range:

PLN 192,000 - 252,000 (Poland)

£38,000 - £46,000 (UK)