The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is looking for an excellent candidate, specialising in research and evaluation, to join our Home Affairs and International Programmes team in London. The successful applicant will work on a broad range of social challenges in both policy domains.

In Home Affairs, this might include developing and implementing field trials with police forces and other agencies on a range of issues, like: reducing susceptibility to online fraud, preventing crime or increasing the diversity of Police officers.

In International Programmes, this might developing and implementing field trials in middle and lower income. We work directly with governments and international organisations on social challenges like: corruption, financial inclusion and, more broadly, the efficient and inclusive delivery of public services.

Though embedded in our Home Affairs and International Programmes team, the successful candidate will maintain a close working relationship with BIT’s Core Research Team, which oversees the design of evaluation and analysis for the whole of BIT.

The then UK 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.

BIT works with governments around the world in almost every area of policy. Whilst the subject and output of our projects vary considerably, there are common threads: we try to understand the context 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.

The company today spans four continents but has the same friendly, enthusiastic and non-hierarchical office culture as it did when it was a team of just eight employees. Staff at BIT today come from many countries across the world, and from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including academia, government, NGOs and the private sector. Beyond qualification and experience, BIT also selects staff according to our company values: prioritising social impact; empiricism and humility; fresh thinking; collaboration; and public service.

The successful candidate will join BIT as an Associate Research Advisor working within the Home Affairs and International Programmes team.

As such, they will work only on projects conducted by this team, but have the same responsibilities as members of the Core Research team, which include:

• supporting trial design and implementation;
• data management and analysis; and
• reporting and overall dissemination of results.

As a researcher embedded within a policy team, the successful candidate will get to dedicate more time to particular projects, which they will follow from start to finish. This involves in particular:

• spending more time interacting with partners;
• contributing to preliminary research (quantitative and qualitative); and
• participating in intervention design.

This role will suit a candidate with a quantitative background and a strong interest in generating and using evidence for policy making.

BIT additionally believes in offering opportunities for team members to grow and learn new skills: We offer a large range of both policy and research training sessions to staff of all level, and encourage close collaboration with senior, more experienced, members of the team on all projects.

The Behavioural Insights Team brings together people with different skills sets and backgrounds. You must be able to demonstrate a balance of skills across those listed below, but we do not expect you to excel in all areas:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant subject (such as economics, statistics, or another social sciences degree with a strong quantitative element);
• Strong quantitative skills, and a good understanding of evaluation methods (RCTs and quasi-experimental methods);
• Good working knowledge of Stata or of another statistical software (R, SPSS, Matlab) - this will be tested;
• Relevant experience managing and analysing data (using large datasets is a plus);
• Ability to manage a workload of several projects and to deliver to a high standard on deadline;
• Ability to work collaboratively with colleagues and partners;
• Excellent communication skills, including ability to communicate to non-technical and policy audiences; and
• Willingness to develop new, and improve existing skills, in research methods and behavioural science.

• Experience conducting original research, either using large datasets or conducting experiments in the lab or field (for example as a research assistant or as part of study);
• An understanding of the behavioural science literature;
• An interest in public policy issues and current affairs;
• Working knowledge of a relevant foreign language (in addition to English), preferably one of Spanish, Bengali, or Bahasa Indonesia; and
• Experience working in low- and middle-income countries.

• 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. As such, we use Applied, a platform BIT has developed to fully anonymise and remove unconscious bias from the recruitment process. Mental shortcuts often help us to make quick decisions in a busy world, but in the context of recruitment, they can perpetuate inequality.