The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is looking for an exceptional candidate to join as a Senior Advisor in the Youth, Education and Skills team in London, focusing on education policy.

The policy portfolio will include a range of exciting areas such as looking at how to drive better outcomes for children and young people through the application of behavioural insights. Tackling challenges in this area, some of the highest priorities in government, will offer the successful candidate the opportunity to oversee projects of work that apply knowledge of behavioural insights to some of the UK’s most pressing problems.

The successful applicant will project manage and lead on the delivery of a new programme of work that will be announced in 2018. This role includes ensuring the smooth running of a suite of small and large scale trials. It will involve being able to successfully adapt to the changing context of trials and overcoming implementation challenges whilst retaining the academic rigour of the research. Outside this main function, the role will also include supporting on other education and skills projects and line management of members of the education team. The candidate in this role will need to be able to effectively liaise with schools, colleges, academics and policymakers.

The Behavioural Insights Team

The then Prime Minister created BIT in 2010 to apply behavioural science to public policy in the UK. In February 2014 we became a social purpose company, owned by the Cabinet Office, Nesta (an innovation charity) and our employees.

The Behavioural Insights Team works with governments around the world in almost every area of policy. Whilst the subject and output of our projects varies considerably, there are common threads: we try to understand the contexts in which people make decisions; we notice small details; we find out what has and hasn’t worked before; we come up with innovative ideas for solving policy problems and we measure everything we do as robustly as we can.

As well as displaying professional excellence, BIT selects staff on the basis of our company values: always prioritising social impact; empiricism and humility; fresh thinking, collaboration; and public service.

Roles and Responsibilities

This role will be filled by someone who has excellent organisational and communication skills; has experience leading a diverse group of people with different organisational cultures and ways of working; has an eye for detail and commitment to quality in all aspects of a project and who has successfully managed complex projects in the past.

Project managing a new programme of work (to be announced in the new year) will be the focus of this Senior Advisor role. The successful candidate will be responsible for driving the management of the project forward, including by managing key relationships with stakeholders including academics, education providers, educators and schools. The role will also include coordinating all the parties involved and ensuring the smooth and timely delivery of the project to budget. There will be multiple phases including large workshops, quantitative and qualitative research and preparing research papers.

Essential

• Excellent project management skills, including an eye for detail and commitment to quality in all aspects of a project;
• Proven experience in delivering complex policy or research projects, ideally within public sector environments;
• Substantial experience developing or delivering policy and/or projects in government, academia, or for a consulting firm;
• Experience of working in a school, education NGO or similar;
• A deep understanding of the behavioural science literature and how it can be applied to help solve complex policy problems;
• Strong leadership and teamwork skills, including supporting team members to develop their own skills and expertise;
• Excellent client and stakeholder relationship management;
• Ability to support the design and implementation of rigorous evaluations, including but not limited to randomised controlled trials;
• Excellent written and verbal communication; and
• High level strategic thinking, challenging existing assumptions and creative problem solving.

Desirable

• Qualification in project management (Prince 2, PMP or equivalent); and/or experienced in managing both waterfall and agile projects;
• A Masters or PhD in a relevant subject area (including, but not limited to: behavioural economics, economics, law, psychology);
• Confident in ability to use your knowledge of education policy and behavioural science to come up with interesting and practical ideas for how policy can be improved; and
• Experience of working in the areas of education policy.

Please note:

• If you do not already hold the right to work in the UK and/or require sponsorship in order to continue working here, you should think carefully before applying. This is because we will be unable to sponsor you unless there is no other suitably qualified settled worker available to fill the role or your current immigration status means that the resident labour market test will not apply in your case.
• The Behavioural Insights Team is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and is determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.