Project Manager - Waverley Court

An opportunity has arisen for a permanent part-time (18 hours) project manager to create and deliver an exciting £1.7m participatory budgeting programme across Edinburgh, making a real difference to the city and its visitor economy.

In the summer of 2026, Edinburgh will be the first Council in Scotland to introduce a visitor levy. Through the levy, overnight visitors will contribute millions to city services that benefit residents, visitors and people who work or study in the city. This spending will help to ensure Edinburgh remains a world-class tourism destination.

The levy will provide £1.7m in grants to be allocated through a participatory budgeting scheme, with £100,000 allocated to each of the city’s 17 multi-member electoral wards. The successful candidate will be the key officer in developing the participatory budgeting mechanism. 

The successful candidate will be an experienced project manager who will have experience of stakeholder engagement and communications. They would benefit from experience of the operation of participatory budgeting schemes, which could be from any sector.

They will build support for their programme, create a network, and set up a monitoring programme during year one which will evidence the delivery of value for money. They will promote the programme to stakeholders – including the business and tourism community – and assist in the development of participatory budgeting options.

In year two, a full-time project manager role will be created in addition to this role, with both project managers working together to deliver the participatory budgeting programme.

This role will see the successful candidate work closely with an experienced engagement and consultation team, as part of the Strategy Division of the Chief Executive’s Office. We are a professional and high performing team that supports work across the Council to deliver on important programmes which have support from residents and other stakeholders.

This role will be able to work flexibly between the Council’s headquarters at Waverley Court in central Edinburgh and their home, but this role will require occasional travel to other locations and work outside of normal office hours to attend stakeholder events. There is scope to agree the normal days/hours worked for this post.

We're committed to creating a workplace culture where all our people feel valued, included and able to be their best at work, and we recognise the benefits that a diverse workforce with different values, beliefs, experience, and backgrounds brings to us as an organisation.

As part of our goal to improve our organisational culture and create a great place to work together for the people of Edinburgh, we want to make sure that we’re bringing the best people into our roles, not just in their skills and experience but also in their approach to work.

To help achieve this, we’re changing the way we interview and assess candidates by moving from a competency-based interview approach to a behavioural and technical (skills for the job) based approach. This new way of interviewing will allow us to assess how you think and how you would bring Our Behaviours of Respect, Integrity and Flexibility into your ways of working.

Our salary range typically reflects the initial starting salary and annually increases until it reaches the top of the range.

Happy to talk flexible working.

Responsibilities