Senior External Communications Manager - Corporate Reputation

About the role:

This fixed-term interim role provides senior external communications support to promote and protect BT’s corporate reputation, and provide additional resource for the external comms team over the next 3-4 months. The successful candidate will provide counsel and delivery for strategic external communications around topics and issues across BT.

The role will focus on proactive and reactive reputational building external comms, including: corporate campaigning, issues management and reputational defence – providing clear advice, disciplined messaging and experienced media handling.

• …working closely with the interim Director of External Communications and colleagues across the external comms team (corporate, media centre, Consumer, Business & Technology), as well as Internal Comms, Policy & Public Affairs, Investor Relations, Legal, Regulatory, Strategy and other senior stakeholders
• …strengthening BT’s corporate reputation with proactive and reactive external storytelling in owned and earned external channels
• …providing strategic, senior-level external comms support, issues management and media relations for a range of reputational themes across BT Group

• …developing clear external positions, reactive lines, Q&As, briefings and stakeholder handling plans for complex and confidential issues
• …bringing informed judgement and calm execution to complex, fast-paced issues.

What you’ll be doing:

• Issues leadership: Lead or support the external communications response to high-level reputational and agenda-setting issues
• Senior counsel: Provide clear, practical communications advice to senior stakeholders and colleagues
• Message development: Shape messaging and narratives for reputation building moments and complex issues, ensuring alignment with BT’s strategy, regulatory position, investor narrative and wider stakeholder context
• Content drafting: Produce high-quality reactive lines, Q&As, briefings, media statements, stakeholder notes and senior leader talking points, sometimes at short notice
• Stakeholder coordination: Work collaboratively with Corporate Affairs & Brand colleagues, as well as Investor Relations, Legal, Regulatory, Strategy and relevant business leads
• Media handling: Support sensitive media engagement with national, business and trade journalists – showing senior judgement, confident handling and expertise
• Horizon scanning: Help identify emerging issues, reputational risks and stakeholder sensitivities, turning insight into practical communications recommendations

Confidentiality and governance: Handle confidential, market-sensitive or board-related information with appropriate care, judgement and escalation discipline.

Essential Skills / Experience:

• Significant External Comms experience in a complex regulated industry of a similar scale to BT
• Significant experience in corporate, financial, regulatory or issues communications within a listed company, major regulated business or equivalent advisory environment
• Strong understanding of the UK media landscape and how reputational issues can play across national, business, trade, political and investor audiences
• Ability to translate complex regulatory, commercial, legal or financial issues into clear external messages and practical handling plans 

Desirable Skills / Experience:

• Excellent judgement in sensitive, high-pressure situations, including when information is incomplete, confidential or evolving quickly
• Confidence working directly with senior leaders and specialist functions, including Legal, Regulatory, Policy & Public Affairs, Investor Relations and business teams
• Strong writing skills, with the ability to draft quickly, accurately and in a tone that is calm, credible and defensible
• Collaborative, open approach, able to plug into existing teams and add senior capacity without duplicating press office or wider campaign capability
• Logical, calm and detail-oriented, with the resilience to manage pressure and ambiguity.

Our Package:

Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle. 

Your core benefits include: 

• Company car scheme (or cash alternative) 
• 15% on target annual bonus 
• Private healthcare for you and your family 
• Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family  
• Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off  
• Equalised maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay 
• Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband 
• Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us 
• Holiday purchase scheme 

You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready. 

BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good.  Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers. 

BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country.   Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.