Senior Portfolio Adviser

Job Description:

• Are you an experienced marketing and communications professional who is passionate about building relationships and delivering important work?
• Do you enjoy collaborating across diverse teams?
• Can you bring order to competing priorities?

Kōrero mō te tūranga—About the role

As the Senior Portfolio Adviser in Te Wāhanga a Manaia - Faculty of Science and Engineering, you will work in close partnership with faculty leadership.

You will:

• Play a pivotal role in helping the Te Wāhanga a Manaia - Faculty of Science and Engineering connect with its internal and external communities.
• Act as a conduit between the Faculty and the University's digital, communications, and marketing group, ensuring faculty priorities are understood and aligned, while supporting the faculty to confidently navigate communications and marketing opportunities.
• Help build and sustain the Faculty’s communities across students, staff, alumni, industry and research partners, with particular emphasis on visibility, storytelling, and engagement. This includes shaping and delivering social media activity, promoting events and initiatives, and supporting the successful launch of new and evolving qualifications.
• Work within a team that combines expertise in communications, marketing, and stakeholder engagement. We connect people, insights, and opportunities across the organisation. This ensures the Faculty’s perspectives, priorities, and achievements are heard, understood, and championed. We are uniquely placed to ensure that the right conversations include the right people at the right time. Ultimately, we help things run smoothly and deliver better outcomes for everyone.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the development and delivery of communications, marketing, and engagement plans for the Faculty of Science and Engineering, ensuring alignment with the University’s overarching strategy and KPIs.
• Build and maintain strong, proactive relationships with faculty leadership, senior staff, and internal stakeholders to ensure priorities and opportunities are clearly understood and progressed.
• Oversee faculty communication and engagement channels—including web, social, advertising, newsletters, print, and digital—ensuring content is current, relevant, and consistent with university standards.
• Build strong, positive working relationships across the University, including within the wider Communications, Marketing and Digital Engagement Group, and with senior leaders, staff, and external stakeholders.

Ō Pūmanawa—About you

You:

• Will be organised, manage competing priorities, pay attention to details and communicate clearly.
• Will be skilled at relationship building, translating strategic objectives into practical actions, and work collaboratively to achieve results.
• Are curious, proactive, and genuinely motivated to take ownership of your work.

Key requirements:

• Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining effective relationships across dynamic teams with divergent stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience in marketing, communication, and engagement activities.
• Demonstrated ability to manage, prioritise, and contribute to multiple projects and a wide range of tasks and interactions with several internal clients.
• Demonstrated ability to write communications and marketing material to a corporate, professional standard.
• Previous experience in the use of social media as a communications and marketing tool.
• Appropriate tertiary qualification in communications and/or marketing (or other relevant area), or equivalent experience working within a communications and marketing environment.

Role Description: Click here to see further information, including salary details.

If this link is not available, click 'apply' to view this on the University careers page.

Close date for vacancy: 08 May 2026.

Contact details for vacancy: If you have any questions regarding this role please get in touch with Elizabeth Cherry, (elizabeth.cherry@vuw.ac.nz).

How to apply: Please ensure you are applying for this role directly on our careers page and not via email. Candidates must submit supporting documents along with their resume, such as a cover letter.

Applicants who do not have residency or citizenship and require a visa to work at the University must clearly indicate their visa status in their application and understand that if they do not have a current, relevant visa, they will need to secure this independently.

Applications will be reviewed as they are received, and we may progress with suitable applicants prior to the application closing date. Applications from recruitment agencies are not accepted.