CRM & Commercial Systems Lead | Circa £61,300 + excellent benefits | Permanent | Hybrid

We’re looking for a CRM & Commercial Systems Lead to shape the future of our customer and member experience. You’ll own the CRM roadmap and the commercial systems that support our end‑to‑end journey, ensuring the system capability evolves in line with business needs.

In this role, you’ll be the driving force behind organisation‑wide adoption, empowering teams to use our CRM confidently and consistently. A key part of your role will be embedding clear, repeatable processes that ensure the CRM is used in a standard and reliable way across the organisation. By improving data quality, strengthening reporting, and ensuring the platform remains secure, compliant, and continuously optimised, you’ll help make the CRM a trusted everyday tool. Your work will enable every team to work smarter, make better decisions, and move faster.

In this new exciting role, you’ll be responsible for:

• Strategic management: Own and deliver the CRM & Commercial Systems roadmap, ensuring adoption is central to every initiative and aligning decisions to business objectives and measurable behavioural change.

• Stakeholder leadership: Build strong relationships across senior leadership, Commercial, Marketing, and cross‑functional teams to advocate for the solution, secure buy in and remove adoption barriers. Communicate plans, risks, and benefits clearly to support successful uptake.

• Process optimisation: Continually improve processes and data quality; embedding consistent behaviours that make CRM a trusted, everyday tool. Identify opportunities for automation and adoption-led improvements that deliver measurable outcomes.

• Adoption: Champion organisation-wide adoption by designing and delivering impactful training, clear communication and ongoing engagement activities that build long term capability across all teams.

• Design & integrations: Translate business needs into robust solution designs; manage integrations with enterprise platforms (e.g., Power Platform, middleware, data services).

• Supplier management: Lead vendor relationships, contracts, SLAs, upgrades, and issue resolution to ensure cost‑effective, high‑quality delivery.

• Reporting & insight: Deliver reliable, timely dashboards aligned to business priorities.

• Innovation: Track emerging technologies and best practice to keep our commercial ecosystem current and competitive.

Skills & experience that will set you up for success in this role:

• CRM leadership across platforms: Proven roadmap delivery across areas of the business—experience with Salesforce, HubSpot, and/or Dynamics 365.

• Enterprise systems acumen: Hands‑on with integration patterns, data governance, and full systems lifecycle.

• Commercial & Marketing fluency: Deep understanding of processes and objectives; able to engage technical and non‑technical audiences.

• Change & adoption track record: Evidence of successfully driving organisation‑wide adoption of CRM using change management techniques and influencing diverse groups.

• Delivery & optimisation: Managed large initiatives (integrations, platform upgrades, maintenance) and driven process improvement and quality.

• Influence & facilitation: Confident guiding decisions and resolving obstacles with empathy enabling teams to embrace a new way of working.

• Planning & prioritisation: Structured, adaptable, and comfortable with competing demands.

• Supplier & budget management: Negotiated contracts, held suppliers to account, and tracked benefits realisation.

• Data & reporting mindset: Understanding of how data quality and consistent usage underpin successful CRM adoption, KPIs, and performance management.

Did you know...

Research tells us that men are more likely to apply to jobs if they meet only 60% of the criteria, whereas women often hesitate or don't apply unless they meet all of the criteria. This difference in application behaviour can contribute to the gender gap in career advancement and opportunities.

We know the perfect candidate doesn't exist! If you think you have what it takes but don't tick every box, we'd still encourage you to apply - it could be a perfect fit!

Perks & Benefits

Salary - Circa £61,300 dependent on skills & experience.

• 10% non-contributory pension

• 29 days holiday (inclusive of Christmas shutdown) + public holidays

• Group Life Assurance (equal to 4 x basic salary)

• Group Income Protection (after 6 months’ service)

• Salary Sacrifice schemes (cycle to work, home & tech scheme)

• Enhanced and competitive parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender or family structure

• Moneyhealth’s Financial Coaching & Wellbeing Platform

• Health Cash Plan (cash back on eligible medical treatments)

• Benenden Health Care (opt-in benefit)

• Reward & Recognition Programme

• Discounted gym membership

• Sports & Social club

• Payroll charitable giving

• Subsidised on-site restaurant

• Free on-site parking

When we work

Our standard working hours are 8:30 - 16:30 Monday - Thursday, early finish on Friday - 8:30 - 15:45 (Talk to us about flexible working if this doesn’t quite suit you – we take work-life balance seriously!)

How we work

We understand the benefits of remote and in-person collaboration and therefore have a hybrid working model – you’ll be expected to work from our office in Thatcham at least two days per week.

What we do

At the cutting edge of automotive research in the UK, Thatcham Research has a unique role in shaping the design of new vehicles and influencing ever higher standards of safety, security and repair. With an on-site Crash Laboratory, Repair Technology Centre and Training Academy, our research expertise is driving some of the very latest automotive developments in technology, materials and standards in this fast moving and highly technical industry.

Our Gamston facility is one of the UK’s leading sites for active safety, trialling and assessing the latest crash avoidance and driver assistance technologies.

Our Values

As an organisation that believes a strong set of Values are key to our organisational success and a sense of belonging for all colleagues, we ask that you understand, represent and apply our Values of Fearless, Inquisitive, Resourceful, Supportive and Trusted and demonstrate these Values throughout the recruitment process.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We are dedicated to fostering an inclusive workplace which values diversity and embraces each individual's authentic self. We are proud to champion a culture where colleagues freely share their diverse perspectives, recognising that these contribute to our innovative spirit. Our journey of growth and understanding is continuous as we actively invest in diversity training, workshops, and partnerships to ensure positive change.

Beyond our partnerships with the Automotive 30% Club and Women in Data (WiD), we collaborate with various organisations to advance equity not only in gender but also across ethnicity, age, disability, social mobility, LGBTQ+ identities, experiences, and thinking. Our aspiration is to create an environment where everyone thrives, achieves, and experiences a genuine sense of belonging.

Recruitment process

We’re proud to manage our recruitment in-house and believe this direct approach enables us to give you the best possible Employee Experience we can – which starts right here, your application! We’re continuously striving to improve the candidate journey, and transparency (or communication) is a key area of focus – yes, even with salary & benefits.

What can you expect from our recruitment process?

• Regular updates on the progress / outcome of your application

• An initial telephone screening call with our Recruitment Business Partner

• First interview with the hiring manager, usually via Teams

• Second/Final interview, in-person at our office (we may give you a role specific task to present on!)

• Personalised feedback following your interview – because everyone deserves that!

• An opportunity to give us your honest feedback in a short survey on all of the above

We’re committed to removing barriers. If there are any adjustments we can make to better support you, please let us know when you apply.

All applicants must have Right to Work in the UK.

If you're experiencing any issues with our career site or application from, please let us know here: careers@thatcham.org ⁠