Senior contracts manager (13 month FTC cover)

Closing date for applications: 5 October 2025

Salary: £50,000+ dependent on experience (+bonus +benefits)

Location: This role can be based at our London or Sheffield office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Use your negotiation skills to shape the deals behind bestselling books while leading the contracts teams of two dynamic publishing divisions.

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. We're made up of 11 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

Hachette Children's Group is of the UK's largest children's publishers. Our mission is to make it easy for children and young people everywhere to access books and see themselves reflected. We aim to maximise our readers' life chances by inspiring a lifelong love of reading, publishing books for every stage of their journey to adulthood from Enid Blyton to Alice Oseman's Heartstopper. Octopus publishes books for everyone. We love to enlighten, nourish, entertain and most of all inspire readers and listeners everywhere. Octopus is a leader in illustrated publishing, across all categories but especially in food & drink. We have a truly international business, selling directly into every territory in both English language and Foreign co-editions.

The contracts & business affairs department powers the creative success of Hachette UK’s publishing divisions through technical expertise and sound commercial partnership. We engage with authors, editors, agents, and marketing teams at all stages of a book’s lifecycle, from pre-acquisition through to production, promotion, publication and beyond. The department comprises a team of 21 who handle approximately 3,500 contractual paperwork requests per annum, which include a wide variety of contracts. We are looking for a senior manager, contracts & business affairs, to lead the Hachette Children's Group (HCG) and Octopus Publishing Group (OPG) contracts teams as a parental leave cover.


What you'll be doing

Part of the HUK contracts senior team and reporting to the director for contracts & business affairs, the successful candidate will work closely with the HCG and OPG publishing teams as well as with colleagues in the contracts & business affairs department to:

• Ensure contracts are drafted and negotiated to high standards working within company policy and KPIs
• Advise editorial and publishing teams on contractual elements of acquisitions
• Draft and review contracts including brand licensing agreements, and negotiate amendments as needed
• Draft, check and amend other contractual paperwork, including addenda, novations, reversions and cancellations
• Handle internal and external contract queries
• Take part in IP creation projects in an advisory role
• Line manage line report(s) and train and develop members of the teams as appropriate
• Build and maintain successful working relationships with colleagues at all levels of the contracts & business affairs department, HCG, OPG and other relevant HUK teams
• Use initiative, within the parameters of company and group policies, to find creative solutions to unusual problems arising from complex negotiations
• Deliver training to editors and others at HCG and OPG on contracts & business affairs department processes and guidelines
• Lead the HCG and OPG contracts teams and be the team's first point of contact with the Orion leadership team

Who we are looking for

• Proven experience in contracts (or business affairs/legal) in the publishing, media or entertainment sectors
• Advanced drafting skills
• Ability to conduct effective negotiations
• Ability to lead a team that thrives
• Thorough understanding of copyright and contract law, relevant knowledge of other intellectual property law e.g. trademarks
• Knowledge of, or aptitude for, relevant applications/systems
• Commercial awareness and financial literacy
• Ability to communicate and build positive working relationships with contacts at all levels

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and Religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

Our commitment

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds. If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.