Living Collection Manager

Closing Date: 17/02/2026

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Washington

Employed

£27,847 per annum

Permanent

Animal care/living collections

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Living Collection Manager

About The Role

WWT Washington is an urban oasis on the banks of the river Wear. A mosaic of man-made wetlands and supporting habitats, our living collection serves to connect visitors with the wonder of wetlands.

This is an opportunity to lead our collection team in telling our stories, bringing people nose to beak with our birds and falling in love with our otters. Providing our animals with the very best care, managing a diverse team of staff and volunteers and maintaining and developing our exhibits and care facilities, you’ll work alongside our central animal care team to embed systems of work and ensure compliance.

This is an annualised hours contract based on an average of 37.5 hours per week. Salary will be paid in equal monthly amounts.

About You

Our ideal candidate will have:

Degree or Diploma in relevant subject
Full current driving licence
Demonstrable experience in a similar role within a large estate, park, zoo or other visitor based animal attraction
Experience in animal management, including aviculture, incubation and biosecurity
Experienced in value driven leadership, demonstrating good management, organisation and development of full-time keepers and volunteers
Operation of grounds maintenance machinery & equipment
Use of MS Office software (e.g. Outlook, Word, Excel)

You’ll form part of the leadership team here, championing our values and behaviours framework to create a welcoming, engaging, inclusive space, whilst driving our culture of continuous improvement and development of both our offer and our people.

Cross-departmental working is at the heart of our operation here, providing great opportunities to develop your knowledge and experience of all aspects of our nature reserve and operation as a leading local visitor attraction, alongside leading the collection team in their core duties.

We reserve the right to close the advert early if we receive a sufficient number of applications from candidates who meet the required skills and experience. We therefore encourage early applications.

About Us

We’re WWT, and we’re on a mission to restore the super-powered ecosystems we call wetlands. There’s never been a more important moment for our work, and we’ve got some phenomenal people on the case.

Whether they’re taking a new visitor under their wing, or conducting ground-breaking research further afield, our team are second to none. And there’s nothing we love more than watching them soar.

Whatever you do here, you’ll be helping to restore wetlands and unlock their power. So, the only question left is, what role will you play?

Why you’ll love working at WWT

Wake up every day knowing your work is helping to restore wetlands, and our world
Be surrounded and inspired by our team of passionate, dedicated people
33 days annual leave (which goes up to 38 days after 5 years of service) – this includes bank holidays and you have flexibility to take those days whenever you want
Free entry to all our wetland centres, including your family
Free car parking and secure bike storage areas
Colleague discount on shopping and memberships
Cycle to work scheme
Contributory pension scheme
Life Assurance of three times your salary, for peace of mind for your loved ones
Independent personal, workplace and financial advice from our Employee Assistance Programme

WWT is an equal opportunities employer and all applications will be considered solely on merit.

Registered Charity Number England & Wales, no 1030884 and Scotland, no SC039410

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