Senior Chef Manager, Leeds

Job Title: Senior Chef Manager Salary: Commencing at £32,068 with progression to £35,036 per annumClosing Date: About the Role

Leeds City College is seeking a talented Senior Chef to join our Food Services and Catering team, playing a key role at the heart of the student experience. We are committed to creating an environment that supports a better future through positive, inspiring actions that make a real difference.

In this role, you will be responsible for preparing a variety of fresh, nutritious meals that appeal to both students and staff, while consistently delivering an excellent standard of service.

This is a hands-on position, requiring you to lead and support a team of food service assistants across two cafés, ensuring smooth day-to-day operations.

This opportunity is ideal for someone looking for a rewarding and challenging role within a supportive environment. The position offers a great work-life balance, with Monday to Friday daytime hours and only occasional evening or weekend work.

What You Will Do

• Manage two onsite cafés, delivering a consistently high-quality food and customer service experience
• Prepare and cook fresh, nutritious meals while developing innovative menus that meet customer needs
• Oversee budgets, purchasing, stock control, and financial processes to achieve GP targets
• Lead, train, and motivate the catering team, managing staffing matters effectively
• Ensure compliance with food safety, HACCP, and hygiene standards while supporting events and wider catering operations

About You

• Proven experience within the catering and hospitality sector, including cooking in a commercial kitchen
• Experience managing refectory or canteen-style operations, ideally across multiple outlets
• Strong track record of producing a wide variety of food to a high standard
• Experience leading teams, with a focus on training and staff development
• Knowledge of food cost control, stock management, and GP margins
• Understanding of food hygiene systems, due diligence, and compliance requirements
• Holds a Level 2 Food Safety Certificate

Benefits

The group offers a range of excellent benefits, including:

Annual leave: 
Curriculum and Management: 44 days plus bank holidays
Curriculum support and business support: 39 days plus bank holidays

Pension schemes with generous employer contributions:
Teachers’ Pension Scheme
Local Government Pension Scheme
People’s Pension Scheme

CPD opportunities:
Annual staff conference plus 2 additional staff development days.
Qualifications including PGCE, Apprenticeships, Leadership and Management courses.

Employee wellbeing initiatives: Family Friendly Policies, discounted onsite spa     (Printworks) and gym (Park Lane).

Travel and commuting:  Discounted travel available through Metro card, Northern Rail, First Bus, Arriva Bus and Cycle to work schemes.

Flexible and hybrid working opportunities:  Please speak to the recruiting manager regarding flexible opportunities as these differ between roles.

About Us Luminate Education Group is a collective of education providers based in Yorkshire with one clear purpose: to make a positive difference to people’s lives through genuinely transformative education and training.We offer a wide range of job vacancies across our business support functions - Finance, Human Resources, ITSS, Marketing, Communications, Executive Support, Estates and Food Services. Our large size and diverse range of member organisations means there are always exciting opportunities to progress.As an education provider, we are committed to lifelong learning and investing in our workforce, and you’ll have access to a broad variety of training and professional development designed to help you continually develop and grow.Join us on the journey to being the best that we can collectively be for our students, apprentices, staff and our stakeholders.Luminate Education Group consists of; Harrogate College (HC), Keighley College (KC), Leeds City College (LCC), Leeds Conservatoire (LC), University Centre Leeds, Leeds Sixth Form College and Yorkshire Centre for Training & Development.SAFEGUARDING At Luminate Education Group we are committed to the safeguarding and welfare of all our students including children, young people, and vulnerable adults. We expect all our staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We follow the Safer Recruitment requirements and best practice as set out within Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance. All successful applicants will be required to complete mandatory pre-employment checks which include an enhanced DBS check, online checks and must have two satisfactory references. Please be aware that it is a criminal offence to apply for this post if you are barred from engaging in regulated activity in connection to children.EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION We recognise, value and champion diversity & Inclusion. As we engage with a diverse student population we want to ensure we reflect that in our staff population too. For us diversity is about building happy teams, full of people that want to learn and be inspired by each other, by our different experiences and backgrounds. It is important to us that both staff and students achieve their full potential. Diversity is important to us, but inclusion is equally, if not more important. It’s not just about having the representation but also providing the people we recruit with opportunities and valuing everyone’s contributions and perspectives.RECRUITMENT AGENCIES We kindly request that recruitment agencies do not forward any unsolicited CVs in relation to any of our advertised roles or speculatively. If we require support with any of our vacancies we will get in touch with agencies directly.

• We do not recognise submissions of unsolicited or speculative CV applications from recruitment agencies.
• We shall not be liable for any fee / commission in the event we employ a candidate that may have been submitted as an unsolicited/speculative application from an uninstructed recruitment agency.