Senior Copyeditor

SENIOR COPYEDITOR (WORDS-WALLE)

WE’RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE SPIRITED, CREATIVE, RESOURCEFUL, SUPER-ORGANISED AND BIG-HEARTED TO JOIN US AT DISHOOM.

We have a brilliant full-time, permanent role available within a first-class creative marketing team for an award-winning restaurant company. It’s based at Dishoom’s Babu* House (head office) in Shoreditch, with a unique set of responsibilities and the opportunity to contribute to an innovative, much-loved brand which values culture, creative and customer experience above all else.

Dishoom takes an unusual approach to its creative. If you’re a fan of brand guidelines and rigid tone of voice principles, this isn’t the role for you! Our Senior Copyeditor needs to be a conceptual thinker, a story-seeker, a lover of words and a builder of worlds. You’ll appreciate Keats as much as comics and be able to turn simple concepts into exceptional copy that fits seamlessly within the Dishoom world – ‘our’ Bombay. You’ll have a passion for storytelling, a knack for strategic thinking, and a proven ability to produce engaging, poetic content across various platforms.

This role is crucial in carrying the voice of Dishoom (and its sibling, Permit Room) across all touchpoints, ensuring consistency and creativity in all our communications. Reporting to the Head of Copy, this is a hands-on role spanning conceptual direction, content creation and project management, and no two days are the same! The Senior Copyeditor will be working on:

WRITING

• Crafting compelling, persuasive, emotive and high-quality copy for a variety of mediums, including emails, long and short-form website content, social captions and assets, products and packaging, events and print materials.
• Writing and editing menu copy for Dishoom and Permit Room – from seasonal menu changes to event and opening menus.
• Collaborating on bringing new restaurant openings to life – from contributing to café founding myths and location pages to interior signage and launch comms.
• Helping to shape Permit Room’s uniquely punchy-yet-charming tone of voice and applying it across menus, website, social, collateral, long-form journal content, emails and more.
• Taking a leading role in crafting copy across digital engagement projects – loyalty, personalised customer journeys, email campaigns, SEO content.
• Helping to inform AI copy tools that help non-copy team members write on-brand with confidence, and help maximise copyeditors’ capacity.

EDITING

• Overseeing the menu change process, working with freelancers, our chefs, bar team and finance to make sure every dish name, description, dietary label and price is right.
• Editing and testing recipes for home cooks – for our online journal and at-home kits – making sure every one is clear, accurate and a pleasure to cook from, in line with our house style.
• Acting as a brand guardian alongside the Head of Copy, ensuring all brand messaging, creative copy, content and TOV are consistent with Dishoom’s brand and values.

IDEAS AND RESEARCH

• Working closely with the Head of Copy, the Head of Brand Creative and the wider creative team to develop creative concepts and campaigns.
• Contributing to brainstorming sessions and creative meetings, bringing fresh ideas and innovative solutions.
• Conducting extensive research to uncover compelling stories, historical contexts, and cultural nuances that can be woven into our content.
• Identifying opportunities to elevate and deepen the brand across all touchpoints.
• Staying up to date with industry trends, competitor activities, and emerging technologies to keep our content fresh and relevant.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Managing multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring deadlines are met without compromising on quality.
• Coordinating with cross-functional teams (including designers, marketers and other stakeholders) to deliver cohesive and effective integrated campaigns.
• Presenting creative copy and concepts to stakeholders across the business, incorporating feedback to refine and perfect the work.
• Identifying areas where the copy team’s processes can be streamlined – from briefing to approvals – and helping put better ways of working in place.

SUPPORTING THE TEAM

• Helping the Head of Copy oversee the copy team’s work – making sure junior and midweight copyeditors have achievable workloads and every deadline is met.
• Developing and mentoring junior and midweight copyeditors, reviewing their work and briefing freelancers, guiding them to produce high-quality content that aligns with Dishoom’s brand and values, including regular feedback to enhance skills and output.

You will shine in this role if you are:

1. An exceptional writer, a crafter of poetry: witty, charming, articulate and thoughtful. Coming with several years’ copywriting and copy-editing experience at a senior level, e.g. in a creative agency, editorial or publishing house – working on some outstanding brands, with a strong portfolio to show for it.
2. You have an ear for tone, and you don’t need to rely on style guides; reading existing copy is enough to set you on the right track.
3. Passionate about storytelling and able to craft narratives that engage and persuade diverse audiences – with a fascination for South Asian culture, particularly Bombay.
4. Sparky, curious, creative (of course) with a strong aesthetic sense. (You read a lot – both fiction and non-fiction – and are happy to dive into our in-house bookcases outside of work hours.)
5. Experienced in writing about food and editing recipes for home cooks.
6. Experienced overseeing first-class creative communications across digital and physical touchpoints, and confident at interrogating briefs to get to the heart of what’s needed for our guests.
7. Extremely organised and fanatical about detail – editing and proofreading documents is quick, easy, dreamy work for you. You’re flexible too – you certainly know your semicolons from your en dashes – but you’re comfortable ignoring rules and making up new ones to satisfy a tone of voice.
8. Pragmatic, resourceful and a ‘doer’ – adept at juggling tight deadlines and competing priorities, while keeping brief-holders and project managers in the loop on the status of copy.
9. Comfortable with SEO principles and digital marketing trends, and curious and positive about making the best use of AI tools – with the judgement to know where human craft matters most.
10. Confident with a Mac, Google Workspace, Slack, Adobe Acrobat digital proofing and project management systems like monday.com.
11. Comfortable leaving ‘big brand’ ideas and behaviours at home.
12. Big-hearted, warm and genuinely lovely with everyone.

Some benefits you’d get joining us:—

• Joining our Healthcare cash plan (to help with expenses like dentists, opticians, physiotherapy and prescriptions).
• Regular team events and a weekly team lunch get-together in Babu House.
• A day off to attend the annual Family Mela and the Christmas Party.
• Team discounts – 50% during the day and 25% in the evening in all our cafés and Permit Rooms, plus 25% off in the Dishoom Store.
• A monthly ‘black-card’ allowance to spend at Dishoom.
• An exciting role in a growing business where you can have a huge impact.
• Plus, you’ll be in a team of super smart, supportive and ambitious people – all working to create something career-defining in terms of a place for our team to work.

Deadline for applications is 6pm on Monday 16th November

*Babu can be a term of respect in India but is more frequently used to refer to bureaucrats behind desks who don’t do much.

At Dishoom - everyone is welcome. We are committed to having an inclusive and diverse workplace and strongly encourage people from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences to apply for roles with us.