Innovation Consultant
Deadline: September 1, 2025
Have a question?
Contact: emma.green@wearecatalyst.org
Role Overview
The Innovation Consultant is a delivery-focused, commercially minded role within Catalyst’s Open Innovation team, responsible for designing and delivering bespoke innovation engagements with private sector clients.
Acting as a trusted partner, the consultant will identify opportunities, lead discovery, facilitate workshops, shape strategic proposals and guide clients through their innovation journey, from scoping to implementation. A key part of this role is facilitating inclusive innovation through grand challenges, enabling diverse stakeholders to collaborate on complex problems and co-create impactful solutions. This role blends elements of consulting, stakeholder engagement, and business development, with a strong emphasis on generating actionable insights, driving measurable impact, and building collaborative networks.
Key Responsibilities
- Business Development
Identify and scope the market to drive revenue generated opportunities
Support growth of CRM pipeline, converting conversations into high-impact engagements
Nurture relationships across SMEs and larger corporates with professionalism and strategic focus
- Proposal Development
Lead or support proposal writing, solution scoping and pricing of stakeholder engagements
Collaborate with internal Catalyst teams to cost, package and structure bespoke interventions
Shape engagement plans from initial scoping through to delivery handover
- Client Delivery
Develop and lead the delivery of Open Innovation workshops with external clients
Apply Catalyst’s Open Innovation methodology to assess innovation readiness and develop tailored pathways
Facilitate stakeholder engagements with clarity and empathy
- Insight Capture & Strategic Analysis
Capture and synthesise insights from discovery sessions, interviews, and workshops
Analyse qualitative and quantitative data to inform innovation roadmaps and strategic recommendations
Translate insights into clear, actionable outcomes for clients
- Impact Measurement & Reporting
Track progress of interventions against intended innovation outcomes
Support clients to define and measure innovation success
Contribute to Catalyst’s internal reporting on delivery outcomes and ecosystem impact
- Innovation Strategy
Provide commercial insight and challenge to shape client innovation strategies
Help clients build internal capability and cultures that support sustained innovation
Collaborate with partners and internal teams to curate bespoke innovation journeys
- Team Collaboration
Share learnings, frameworks and insights to strengthen our collective delivery
Act as a connector within Catalyst’s wider innovation ecosystem
Take on any additional reasonable responsibilities as required within the scope of this role.
Key Information
- Full time, permanent contract.
- Attractive benefits package
- Competitive salary up to £45,000 depending on qualifications/experience.
- Based in Belfast, Titanic Quarter or Derry-Londonderry.
- Reporting to Director of Innovation Partnerships.
Employee Perks
- Competitive Benefits Package including Private medical insurance foryou and your dependents
- Generous pension contribution
- Generous life assurance policy
- Enhanced parental leavepackages
- Hybrid working options available
- Free open access to company organised events.
Working at Catalyst
A certified Great Place to Work® and recognised as one of the top 100 Workplaces in the UK for 2024, receiving awards for Best Place to Work, Best Workplace for Development, Best Workplace for Employee Wellbeing, and Best Place to Work for Women, Catalyst is one of Northern Ireland’s most exciting employers.
With a strong vision of Opportunity for all from world-leading innovation, this is a workplace brimming with ambition to create social, cultural, and economic advantage. We are a force for good, bold in our approach with integrity at our core and passion in everything we do.
Diversity and Inclusion at Catalyst
Diversity and inclusion aren’t boxes to tick on a CSR list. At Catalyst, they are part of our DNA, lived, breathed, seen, and heard across our community, projects, and co-working spaces.
We not only want to foster and empower a culture of innovation, but also an environment where people can be their true, authentic self and thrive, and we are proud to be recognised by the Diversity Charter for achieving silver status, with ambitions to progress to Gold.
As an equal opportunity employer, we recruit based solely on the individual’s ability to perform the role, and that’s allowed us to create an inclusive workplace which celebrates the diversity of our teams and community.
Essential Criteria
- Strong track record of delivering consulting services into the private sector
- Demonstrable experience facilitating workshops and innovation-focused engagements
- Commercially astute with experience in business development, proposal writing or account growth
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills – able to engage across all levels of an organisation
- Comfortable managing client CRM pipelines and scoping opportunities with minimal supervision
- Proactive, adaptable, and delivery-focused – thrives in ambiguity and brings structure to complexity
- Strategic mindset with strong operational focus leading both vision-setting and delivery.
Desirable Criteria
- Experience delivering innovation services to the public sector
- Familiarity with open innovation principles and cross-sector collaborative R&D models
- Networked within Northern Ireland’s innovation or enterprise ecosystem
