Jake moved from East Anglia to study for a BA in English literature at Oxford University, and subsequently for an MPhil in eighteenth-century aesthetics at Cambridge University. He worked briefly at Random House before joining Conville & Walsh in 2005 as an assistant to Patrick Walsh, and soon after that took over as foreign rights manager in tandem with developing his own list of authors. He works direct with foreign publishers for the sale of translation rights in most languages, including Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish, and works with associate agents for the sale of Chinese, Japanese and Korean rights. US rights are handled directly by Clare, Patrick and Peter.