Community Manager

About the Role

We are looking for a senior, hands-on community builder to develop and lead our global user and contributor community, with a focus on Scenario Builder’s open-core ecosystem. You will build on the existing community and prepare users and contributors for participation as open-source components become available.

Your purpose will be to help people use our tools confidently, learn from one another and contribute knowledge and improvements that benefit the wider community. You will help build and execute the community building roadmap, establish a dependable programme of support and learning, and create clear pathways for users to become repeat participants, peer supporters and contributors.

The community brings together users and contributors of Scenario Builder’s open core, including energy planners, researchers, modellers, developers and institutions, with different needs and levels of technical experience. You will make it useful and welcoming for both experienced practitioners and people who are new to energy modelling, with particular attention to participation from emerging markets and developing economies.

Reporting to the Head of Market Development, you will work closely with Product, Solutions Engineering, Engineering, and Marketing and Communications. You will own the community programme and member experience, connecting specialist expertise across the organisation with the practical needs of users.

Responsibilities

Community strategy and development (30%)

• Develop and deliver a practical community plan focused on adoption of, participation in and contribution to Scenario Builder’s open core, aligned with TransitionZero’s open-source strategy. Understand the needs of different user and contributor groups through direct conversations, observed activity and feedback.

• Build on the existing community channels and relationships, using targeted outreach and thoughtful onboarding to attract people who will benefit from and contribute to the community. Establish clear community guidelines, constructive discussion practices and dependable coverage. Develop relationships with relevant practitioner, research and open-source networks in coordination with the Head of Market Development.

Responsive support and reusable knowledge (25%)

• Manage day-to-day community activity, ensuring that questions receive a useful response or clear triage within the agreed one-UK-working-day response norm. Coordinate specialist input through agreed routes, provide sufficient context for colleagues to respond efficiently, and keep users informed as questions progress.

• Turn recurring questions and expert answers into durable resources, including FAQs, how-to guides, worked examples and learning materials. Work with technical colleagues to check accuracy and keep resources current. Protect confidential models, data and account information, and direct sensitive requests to appropriate private channels.

Learning, events and community communications (15%)

• Run a repeatable engagement programme of webinars, community calls, demonstrations and contributor sessions, choosing formats that respond to real user needs and available capacity. Attend and speak at relevant in-person open-source and energy events, including forums such as LF Energy, to build relationships and attract users and contributors to the open-core community.

• Coordinate speakers, technical input, invitations, facilitation and follow-through. Make recordings, answers and other useful outputs accessible after events so their value extends beyond the live session.

• Work with Marketing and Communications and Product to share approved updates, useful examples and community stories. Help members understand what is available, how it can support their work and what practical step they can take next.

Contributor development and open-source participation (10%)

• Identify and support users who can become peer mentors, community champions and external contributors. Create accessible routes for people to contribute through documentation, examples, testing, issue reporting, and, where appropriate, models, data and code.

• Work with Engineering and project maintainers on contributor onboarding, contribution guidance and suitable entry points as open-source components become available. Help prospective contributors understand the relevant processes and expectations, recognise their work, and support their continued involvement.

• Coordinate community readiness for releases while keeping technical acceptance, release decisions and public commitments aligned with the responsible teams.

User insight and sustained adoption (10%)

• Maintain a clear understanding of what members are trying to achieve, the workflows they use, where they encounter barriers and what helps them continue using Scenario Builder.

• Provide a regular, evidence-based synthesis to Market Development and Product, highlighting recurring needs, documentation gaps, adoption barriers, promising use cases and potential case studies. Help close the feedback loop by communicating relevant answers and approved changes back to users.

• Connect community activity with the wider user journey, including training, product onboarding and institutional engagement. Work with Product and Market Development to understand whether participation is associated with more confident and sustained use, and use those findings to improve the programme.

Measurement and programme operations (10%)

• Maintain a lightweight monthly scorecard covering meaningful participation, repeat engagement, response patterns, peer support, knowledge-base use, event participation and contributor development. Distinguish external community activity from staff activity.

• Use agreed tools to maintain reliable records of community relationships, recurring needs, contributors and follow-up actions, with appropriate attention to privacy and consent.

• Manage the community calendar, documentation backlog and agreed programme resources. Review what is working, change activities that are not delivering value, and provide clear evidence of progress for internal and programme reporting.

About You

You have built or significantly developed a technical community and understand what makes people return, help one another and contribute. You can set priorities independently, establish credibility in a competitive technical ecosystem and represent TransitionZero confidently with external practitioners and partners. You combine strategic judgement with a willingness to do the work yourself, whether that means welcoming a new member, hosting a session, improving documentation or following up on an unanswered question.

You are technically curious, write clearly and earn trust through useful, accurate communication. You can engage confidently with specialists while making complex subjects accessible to newcomers. You know when you can answer a question and when expert input is needed.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• A demonstrable track record of building or developing a software, developer, open-source, scientific or comparably technical community, with evidence of sustained participation and useful contributions.

• Experience owning a community programme from planning through hands-on delivery, including prioritisation, member engagement, moderation and measurement.

• Excellent written communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to turn specialist input into clear guidance, useful discussions and accessible learning resources.

• Sufficient technical fluency to learn a complex software product, understand user workflows, ask informed questions and distinguish routine support needs from issues requiring specialist input.

• Experience enabling peer learning and contributions, including working with technical teams on documentation, issue reporting or contributor workflows.

• Strong organisational judgement and the ability to work across functions, cultures and time zones, manage expectations, handle sensitive information appropriately and follow through reliably.

Desirable

• Experience in energy, climate, scientific computing, data or analytical software, particularly with users in emerging markets and developing economies.

• Practical familiarity with GitHub Issues, Discussions, documentation and contribution processes, alongside community platforms and engagement analytics.

• Experience developing community champions, supporting an open-source release, or measuring how community participation contributes to product adoption and retention.

• Deep software engineering or power-system modelling expertise is not required. You should be able to develop a strong working understanding of the tools and collaborate credibly with the people who build and use them.