National Project Manager Scotland – digitisation of plant science collections

Part-time (28 hours), fixed term to end of March 2028, based in Edinburgh

Salary £49,204 per annum (pro-rata £39,363) plus generous holiday entitlement, Civil Service pension and other benefits

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an internationally renowned centre for plant science and conservation. Our collections are at the heart of our mission to explore, explain and conserve plant diversity, and include a living collection maintained across our four sites, Herbarium of 3 million preserved specimens, the nation’s botanical Library, and Archive. Our vibrant digitisation programme is helping to improve the accessibility of our collections.

We are now recruiting talented people for a major programme to digitise natural science collections throughout Scotland.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and National Museums of Scotland are establishing a national hub and network of partners for specimen digitisation in Scotland as part of DiSSCo-UK. One of the most ambitious research and digital infrastructure programmes ever undertaken in the cultural or environmental sectors, DiSSCo UK is a £155 million, 10 -year national mission to digitise the UK’s natural science collections and transform how they fuel world-class research, innovation and public value. The programme is coordinated by the Natural History Museum (NHM) in partnership with UKRI, and will unlock tens of millions of specimens as open digital assets, establishing a sovereign national information resource that underpins UK leadership in tackling biodiversity loss, climate change, biosecurity and sustainable development.

We are looking for a National Project Manager to join the Scotland national hub team. Working closely with project leadership at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and National Museums of Scotland, the National Project Manager will coordinate project activity, governance and reporting, and communication within the project team, and line manage a project business support assistant. The role interfaces with a network of partner institutes in Scotland and the DiSSCo-UK coordinators at the NHM and UKRI, helping to communicate updates and share deliverables as necessary.

With a track record of project management success, excellent organisational and communication skills, the post holder this an ideal role for individual will be joining the team at the dawn of an exciting new era for the natural science collections in Scotland.

To apply, please email recruitment@rbge.org.uk with the following:

Your CV

A covering letter outlining the skills, knowledge and experience you would bring to the post

All applicants will need to demonstrate the right to work in the UK. We are unable to sponsor applicants for work visas for this post.

Closing date: 5pm (BST) on Wednesday 29 July 2026

Interview date: Wednesday 13 or Thursday 14 August 2026

If you haven’t heard from us within 2 weeks of the closing date, please assume your application hasn’t been successful on this occasion. No recruitment agencies please.

Contact our recruitment team

If you have any questions, or require any documents in an accessible format, please email recruitment@rbge.org.uk or by using the enquiry form.