Permanent, full-time role with a five-month probation period
Reports to: Futures and Research Project Manager (a director until that post is filled)
With our support you will be our most important day-to-day implementer, working directly with clients on a range of fascinating futures, foresight, research and insights projects. You will form brilliant relationships with our clients, design and deliver new products and services, and be motivated to grow a company that has a positive impact on people's lives. You will have the opportunity to quickly progress to become a manager and then eventually a director, with the potential to become a shareholder. We welcome applications from graduates and people early in their careers.
The sort of person we are looking for
You will love the idea of a role that comes with creating something new but be aware that this takes a tremendous amount of self-motivation and passion for what we do. You will be ready to go ‘all-in’ for ForgeFront.
You will be eager to scale a business that is already in-demand, but to date has been kept deliberately small. This means you will have an entrepreneurial mindset and be genuinely motivated by the idea of leaving your own legacy, rather than contributing to someone else’s established and/or big organisation. ForgeFront will be grown in your image, so you will contribute novel and interesting ideas for future growth opportunities across new products and services. Overall, we are looking for:
Hardworking and willing to go the extra mile in the short term to deliver value and income in the long term (both for themselves and the business)
An entrepreneurial mindset, wanting to take the initiative to build something new and exciting.
Excellent experience managing both upwards and downwards. Comfortable in giving constructive challenge.
Calmness under pressure, and embracing uncertainty. Able to take a step back at frenetic moments and re-evaluate.
Total self-motivation. Eager to crack on and deliver brilliant work to a high standard.
Knowing how to strike a balance between quality of output and speed. Consciousness that as a business that primarily generates income through the utilisation of colleagues’ time, our time is our money.
An interest in having long-term financial security by staying with the business to achieve a potentially lucrative exit for us all.
Why we are hiring
We currently have more demand for our services than capacity to deliver. Until this point, we have been focused on undertaking the work that most interests us, but we now seek to pivot and embrace the demand with new full-time colleagues. Growth is therefore now an important objective for the company. Internally we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to structure our business. Our 1-year plan and 3-year picture contain targets for increased revenue and team size.
Location and contract
This role is in-person 3 days a week, with our office located in Bath, South West England. The role will therefore suit someone living in Bath, or able to commute.
This is a permanent, full-time role of 35 hours a week. The first five months are a probation period, with regular check-ins and a final review before it ends. During probation, either side can end the employment on one week's notice if the role is not the right fit.
Responsibilities
1) Project delivery
Implements day-to-day project tasks across multiple projects, assigned by the relevant project director (PD)
Drafts major project deliverables e.g. final reports, presentation deck for initial PD review.
Lead responsible for other deliverables (weekly updates, Gantt chart and risk register updates) for PD to QA
Attends all project meetings, and follows up with owners of tasks where necessary (clients and project team)
Maintains project documentation and folder structure in SharePoint
Liaises with Associates on specific project tasks under PD's direction
Maintains periodic contact with ForgeFront's network of associates (to discuss potential opportunities)
2) Operations lead
Maintaining up-to-date information on procurement portals
Setting up new email lists, Teams channels and associated internal IT communications products.
Escalating to the Managing Director (MD), Gavin Moore, any relevant/significant updates on procurement portals e.g. supplier refreshes, closing of a framework, etc.
Hands-on implementation of compliance renewals as directed by MD e.g. Cyber Essentials, Living Wage Accreditation
Implementation lead on updating cybersecurity and related policies where required e.g. Risk Ledger
Implementation lead on company password policy, including ensuring staff use 2FA, passwords are up to date (e.g. for procurement portals) and sensitive information is appropriately password protected
Implementation lead on data retention policy e.g. management of personal data from clients, applicants, etc. on the company SharePoint
3) External engagement support
Customer-facing on all product enquiries e.g. Future.Ctrl course invoicing, certificate generation
Helping to produce promotional materials for ForgeFront e.g. one-pagers
Ad hoc updates to the ForgeFront website using Squarespace's simple website editor (note, this is something that can be taught quickly) e.g. adding logos, new associates, and updated procurement framework information. Responsible for ensuring these look brilliant on both desktop and mobile.
Responsible for any other tasks on the website back end e.g. managing course access, distributing the newsletter etc.
LinkedIn content creation and scheduling e.g. proposing posts for the Founder, Sam Douglas-Bate. Use of AI to generate early drafts for ideas except where a specific event or project-related opportunity occurs to post about.
Note, as the team scales, all colleagues may be responsible for delivering tasks beyond their responsibilities until the hiring process is complete.
In the case of the Futures and Research Delivery and Operations Executive, this may mean more time spent on project delivery (see 1) until hires are made in 2027.
Must be able to demonstrate:
Experience delivering in a client-facing role
Experience delivering research-led projects
Marketing experience, with several interesting case studies of posts that have achieved engagement or pages that have been grown.
Design experience e.g. Canva, Squarespace, or WordPress, with a proactive ‘can-do’ attitude to marketing and promotion on LinkedIn.
High-quality written communication with attention to detail.
Ability to develop good working relationships with clients, exceeding expectations where you can.
Flexibility and being okay with uncertainty. Comfortable with taking the initiative.
An understanding of futures and foresight (note: a general understanding of what the industry is and does is adequate)
Desirable additional criteria
Experience working in strategy, policy, government or futures thinking.
Experience delivering research-led projects, but not in an academic setting.
Marketing experience specifically on LinkedIn, with case studies.
An understanding of the types of businesses that may need to procure external research, insights, futures and foresight
An understanding of UK government procurement. This might include procurement portals (e.g. Jaggaer, In-tend, Ariba and R-Cloud), where to find opportunities (e.g. Find a Tender and frameworks) and organisations (e.g. Government Commercial Agency)
Interest in vibe coding and playing with AI tools
Note: we may ask for references to vouch for the experience.
Other information:
Salary: We encourage applicants to view this opportunity beyond the stated salary. With this role you will have the opportunity to progress quickly to a manager-level position, and then a director position. With the director-level position there is the potential to become a shareholder, which could bring dividends and a payout on exit. This role therefore needs to be seen as an entrepreneurial opportunity to scale an already in-demand business towards a potential exit. This may have longer-term financial benefits beyond the salary.
New business incentive scheme: Under this scheme, any colleague who directly brings in a piece of new business, exclusively from their own contact base and hitherto unknown as a stakeholder to ForgeFront, receives a one-off bonus worth 15% of the total contract value.
Leave and L&D: You will get 28 days' annual leave a year (including bank holidays), plus your birthday off. We have an open-door L&D policy, meaning if there is a course or initiative that you want to undertake our default is to give you the time and support to pursue this.
Pension: we auto-enrol you in our Nest workplace pension, with a 3% employer contribution.
Flexible working: we work in person 3 days a week. For the rest of the week, you can work from where you want. In addition, we operate on the basis that if you work longer hours one day, you can take back the time by logging off earlier or logging on later the next day.
Security clearance: some of our defence and security work needs national security vetting. You will need to be willing and able to obtain Security Check (SC) clearance.
About ForgeFront
ForgeFront is a boutique consultancy focused on research, insights, futures and foresight. We have a methodology and course called 'Future.Ctrl' which includes the tools and methods we use with clients to deliver these services.
We supply services and products to large businesses, the third sector, and governments. Much of our recent work has been for the UK Government, where we deliver through the Futures Procurement Framework and other frameworks for research and insights.
We are members of the Association of Professional Futurists, the Global Futures Society and ADS, the UK trade association for aerospace, defence, security and space. We have excellent international partnerships with other organisations working on research, insights, futures and foresight.
ForgeFront has previously been a deliberately small business, but due to significant demand for our services our priority is now growth. We are also aiming to produce more products, such as our Future.Ctrl course and our Forge futures maturity assessment tool. Throughout this new journey we will maintain our entrepreneurial mindset and flat structure.
Our values
These were agreed by the team at a strategy day in 2026. They are incredibly important to us and form the basis of all our recruitment.
Value 1: Quality, rigour and delivery excellence. We combine scientific robustness with a human touch and hold every output to clearly defined standards. We want clients, associates and partners to know they are getting work that is technically strong and helpful.
Value 2: Vision and entrepreneurship. We create exciting, compelling strategic pictures that change how clients see their future. To do this we stay entrepreneurial and agile: spotting opportunities to create more products (rather than services) and being proactive rather than reactive.
Value 3: Team wellbeing, autonomy and low bureaucracy. We protect each other’s time and headspace. We choose flexibility, short meetings and high autonomy over heavy process.
Value 4: Motivation and personal drive. We choose work that excites and stretches us. Remuneration matters, but motivation comes first. If a project stops being interesting or meaningful, we say so and adjust.
Value 5: Ethics and public-interest purpose. We focus on work that helps society make better decisions, and we turn down work that conflicts with that aim.
Value 6: Collaboration and human-centred working. No single voice in our company owns the truth. We believe we build better answers when we challenge each other openly, kindly, and on the basis of evidence. We treat clients, associates and stakeholders as people we are partnering with, not as an ‘us and them’ relationship.
Value 7: Brand, design and aesthetic standards. Visuals matter to us and our clients. Reports, decks, emails, podcasts and platforms should be as carefully considered as the analysis behind them.
Next steps
Stage 1: nothing fancy, please send a CV and short answers (up to 200 words each) to the three questions below, to directors@forgefront.co.uk. Please include your name and the job title you are applying for in the subject heading.
Tell us about a research project you helped deliver for a client or organisation. What was your role, and what difference did it make?
Tell us about a campaign, web page or social media post you created or ran, for example for a student society, club or employer. What did you do, and how did you judge its success?
Why does this role at ForgeFront appeal to you?
Deadline: 30 November 2026
Stage 2: an interview with Gavin and/or Sam, via MS Teams, in early December.
Stage 3: a final in-person interview with Gavin and Sam in Bath, in mid/late December.
We would love you to start with us in January 2027, or as soon as your notice period allows.
Adjustments: if you need any adjustments to apply or to attend an interview, please let us know.
Right to work: you will need the right to work in the UK. We are not able to sponsor visas.
Your data: we will use the information you send us only for this recruitment, and we will delete it six months after the process ends. You can ask to see, correct or delete it at any time by emailing directors@forgefront.co.uk. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Note: ideally, we would give feedback to everyone who applies for a role with us. But we are a small team, and our previous experience of the overwhelming demand to work at ForgeFront means we will be unable to provide this feedback – if we could, we would!