About the role
We are looking for someone to take our AI for Communities programme and turn it into something that can be delivered regularly, well and at scale, across Greater Manchester and beyond.
The programme grew out of our earlier Data for Communities work. It uses participatory, often playful, approaches to help people understand how data and AI shape their lives, and to give them the confidence to question it. Along the way we have developed a number of ways to engage and interact with people, and the people we work with have played a part in creating them. We have also learnt to adapt in the room: sometimes a planned activity gives way to simply listening, as people share their own experiences of how AI, or what they think of as AI, is affecting their lives. We have facilitator resources, workshop designs and a lot of learning. What we need now is someone to shape that into a coherent programme.
This is not a role for someone who wants to arrive and teach people about technology. It is a role for someone who starts from the belief that everyone is an expert in their own experience, and that the most important knowledge in the room often belongs to the people who have been furthest from decisions about data and AI.
You will need to understand data and AI well enough to explain it simply and honestly. But more than that, you will need to be able to work in community settings with care, humility and an awareness of power.
What you’ll be doing
Shaping the programme
- Take our existing workshops, resources and learning and develop them into a programme that can be delivered consistently, while staying flexible enough to respond to each group.
- Co-design new sessions and materials with community members, not just for them, so that what we make reflects the questions and concerns people actually have.
- Make sure all resources are accessible, jargon-free and openly licensed, so others can use and adapt them.
Working with communities
- Build and look after relationships with community groups, voluntary organisations, libraries, housing providers and others who work alongside the people we want to reach.
- Facilitate sessions in community spaces, creating environments where people feel safe to share, question and disagree.
- Pay particular attention to people who are often excluded from conversations about technology, including older people, disabled people, people on low incomes and people from racially minoritised communities.
- Make sure people are properly recognised for their time and expertise.
Growing capacity
- Train and support facilitators, including community members, so the programme is not reliant on ODM alone.
- Develop a train-the-trainer approach and supporting materials.
Learning and influence
- Gather what we learn from communities in ways that respect how people want their voices used, and feed it back into our work on data and AI governance.
- Develop approaches to evaluation that are meaningful to participants, not just to funders.
- Help us make the case for community voice with local government, funders and others, including contributing to bids and reports.
- Share the work through blogs, events and our networks.
Becoming part of a close team
- Access help from others to develop the programme
- Opportunity to input into other programmes
- Opportunity to grow your practice.
Who we’re looking for
We care more about how you work with people than about formal qualifications. Lived experience is valued as much as professional experience, and you do not need a degree. If you meet most of the essential criteria and feel drawn to the role, please apply.
Essential
- Experience of working in community settings, whether paid or voluntary, with people from a range of backgrounds.
- Facilitation experience, and the ability to hold a room with warmth and make space for quieter voices. You can adapt to different situations and are prepared for the unexpected. When a plan isn’t working, you are comfortable setting it aside and going with what the group needs.
- A genuine commitment to centring lived experience, and an understanding of how power shows up in who gets heard, who decides and whose knowledge counts.
- Empathy, patience and humility. You are comfortable not being the expert in the room and you listen more than you talk.
- A working understanding of data and AI: what they are, how they are used in everyday life, and the harms and opportunities they bring. You can explain these things plainly without dumbing them down.
- The ability to turn ideas into practical, accessible resources.
- Good organisation, and the ability to manage your own time within a small team.
Desirable
- Experience in community development, adult education, youth work, advocacy, co-production or participatory research.
- Experience of designing a programme or course, or of training other facilitators.
- Knowledge of the Greater Manchester voluntary and community sector.
- Creative or playful approaches to learning, such as games, drama, art or storytelling.
- Lived experience of the exclusion or inequalities the programme seeks to address.
- Languages other than English spoken in Greater Manchester’s communities.
How we work
These are the values we would expect you to share and help us live up to.
- Everyone is an expert in their own experience. We go into communities to learn as well as to share.
- We are mindful of power. We try not to reproduce the dynamics that leave people shut out of decisions, including in how we run sessions, pay people and use what they tell us.
- We are honest about technology. We do not hype AI and we do not scaremonger. We help people reach their own conclusions.
- We don’t know everything. The world is complex and we are guided by what we learn.
- We are open. What we create is shared openly, with credit to those who helped create it.
- We are humble. We get things wrong, we say so and we learn from it.
Practicalities
| Job title | Community Data & AI Programme Lead |
| Salary | £36,550-£38,776 (depending on experience) rising to £41,338-43,855 in April 2027 (pro-rated) |
| Hours | 0.4 FTE, with flexibility over working pattern |
| Contract | Fixed term of 12 months with a view to extension at the end of the contract |
| Location | Greater Manchester. Hybrid, with regular travel to community venues across the city region |
| Reports to | CEO |
| Other | Some evening and weekend work to fit around the communities we work with, with time off in lieu |
| Contract start | 1st January 2027 |
How to apply
We want the process to reflect the role, so you can apply in whichever way suits you best.
- A letter of up to two pages, or a video or audio recording of up to five minutes, telling us why you want the role and how you meet the essential criteria.
- Tell us about a time you worked with a community or group. What did you learn from them?
- A CV is welcome but not required.
We will share interview questions in advance, and part of the interview will involve a short, informal activity rather than a presentation. Please tell us about any adjustments you need at any stage.
We particularly welcome applications from people with lived experience of the inequalities this programme seeks to address, and from people who are under-represented in the data and technology sector.
If you would like an informal chat before applying, please get in touch at hello@opendatamanchester.org.uk.
Closing date: 23:59 8th November 2026.
Online interviews week beginning 23rd November 2026.