Head of Apprenticeships

We're growing our apprenticeship portfolio through 2027, and we're creating a role to own how it runs: one day a week to start, with real room to grow into more.

This is the person who holds the whole picture and leads the coaches who deliver it. They run their cohorts and carry their caseloads; you'd manage the team, sit across all of it, and answer the questions that decide whether a portfolio succeeds.

The role

Is every learner progressing at the right pace? Is anyone drifting towards a withdrawal that could have been prevented six weeks ago? Are cohorts on schedule? Is the EPA pipeline in order, so gateway is planned rather than discovered late?

You'd own:

• Progression across the portfolio: every learner, every cohort, on track or not, and the intervention when they're not.
• Caseload discipline across the coaching team: whether one-to-ones are happening, whether tripartite reviews are landing on time, whether marking is inside turnaround.
• Delivery to schedule: cohorts running as planned, gaps spotted before they become problems.
• EPA readiness and gateway: planned and evidenced rather than found out about late.
• The coaching team itself: scheduling and cohort allocation, one-to-ones, CPD and development plans, and being the senior person they escalate to.

You'd work closely with our Head of Quality, who owns quality assurance and compliance. The two roles are counterparts: quality assures the standard, you make sure delivery gets there.

Why take a one-day-a-week role

Because it's a genuine ownership seat, not a support one. You'd build the function rather than inherit it: deciding what gets tracked, what the operating rhythm is, what "on track" means here. Nobody hands you a process and asks you to run it.

For someone consulting or working fractionally, it's one reliable day a week with real authority attached. For someone who's stepped back from a full-time apprenticeships leadership role, it's the interesting part of that job without the rest of it. It's flexible within the week, too: beyond the few things that need you at a set time, how you arrange the day is yours. And as the portfolio grows through 2027, the role grows with it if you want it to.

Who this fits

Someone who's done real work in industry (ideally within data & AI) and worked in or around apprenticeships. Ideally both. You'll be far more effective if you know the data and AI standards from the inside, understand how funded delivery works in practice, and have run programmes where learner progression was your problem to solve. You'll be managing a small team of coaches, too, so you're comfortable holding people to a standard while helping them get better at the job. You'll be working in Aptem, which you may already know.

You don't need to have led an Ofsted inspection. You do need to be the person who notices that three learners in one cohort haven't submitted in a month, and does something about it on the Tuesday rather than at the end of the quarter.

About iO-Sphere

We train people to do things with data and AI, not just learn about them. Learners work on real problems inside their own organisations and in Prism, a simulated business we built on 500 million rows of real data. 900+ people have trained with us, we're rated 4.8 on Google, and we're one of the UK's fastest-growing data and AI training startups. Teams at PwC, BAE Systems, Dunelm, Motorway and CBRE send us their people.

Details

• Salary: £13,000–£18,000 a year for 1-1.5 days per week, depending on experience, paid monthly through PAYE. If you'd rather work with us as a contractor, we're open to that at £300–£400 a day subject to subcontracting rules.
• Commitment: One day a week to start, with real scope to expand.
• Location: London or remote in the UK, with some time with the team in London.
• Start: As soon as you can.
• As a regulated training provider we need an enhanced DBS check, safeguarding and Prevent training, and the right to work in the UK; we can't offer sponsorship.

How we hire

A short screening call, a conversation with the team you'd work with, a case study drawn from real delivery rather than an invented puzzle, and a final conversation. We move quickly.

iO-Sphere is an equal-opportunities employer. We hire on merit and welcome applications from every background; if you'd need any adjustment to the process, just tell us.