Spey Catchment Engagement Officer

The Spey Catchment Initiative is recruiting a new Spey Catchment Engagement Officer to help deliver a new programme of engagement with farmers, landowners and land managers across the catchment.

Starting salary: £36,500 FTE (£22,000 pro rata), plus employer’s pension contribution and travel/expenses allowance

Hours: Part-time, 3 days per week (0.6 FTE)

Contract: Fixed term for 12 months initially, from January 2027, with the intention to extend and expand the role, subject to funding

Location: Hybrid – based at home and/or at our office in Grantown-on-Spey, with extensive travel across the catchment

Are you a natural listener who builds trust easily, with people from all walks of life?

Do you want to help tackle the climate crisis by playing a key role in an ambitious programme to fund and deliver catchment-scale nature restoration?

Can you hold your own in a farmyard conversation as comfortably as in a partnership meeting?

Are you ready to join our small, friendly and award-winning team?

If so, we’d love to hear from you!

The Spey Catchment Initiative (SCI) has an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated engagement officer to help deliver a new programme of engagement with farmers, landowners and land managers across the Spey catchment.

This work will directly shape two major programmes now being developed for the catchment — The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Catchment Investment Programme and the Atlantic Salmon Trust’s (AST) Catchment Audit — by making sure land managers are properly understood, kept informed, and more importantly genuinely listened to as these programmes take shape. We want you to help give land managers a seat at the table and to be involved in creating solutions.

Key responsibilities include:

• Understand: build a clear picture of who the catchment’s land managers are, and how best to reach them
• Inform: keep land managers up to date as these programmes develop, through focus groups, events and digital content
• Identify: gather insight on appetite for nature-based solutions and sensitivities to help shape where and how nature-based solutions are explored
• Listen: build relationships through one-to-one conversations and honest discussions to ensure land managers are integral to decisions as things progress, as well as providing an evidence base to attract worthwhile investment
• Act: turn engagement into delivery — feeding what you learn into SCI’s own project pipeline, spotting potential pilot sites and local champions, and shaping TNC and AST’s project design directly, with a genuine seat at the table

As a secondary part of the role, you’ll also take on day-to-day creation and scheduling of SCI’s social media content, working closely with the wider team and under the oversight of our Head of Communications and Strategic Projects — full support will be given to develop these skills if they’re new to you.

The Spey Catchment Initiative is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation working in partnership across the Spey catchment to protect and restore its rivers, woodlands and wider natural environment.

A detailed job description is available at https://speycatchment.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/-Catchment-Engagement--