The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is looking for an exceptional candidate to join us as an Associate Advisor in our Research and Evaluation team. In this role you will work on with the Chief Scientist and the Head of Social Capital on projects involving behavioural science, policy, randomised controlled trials, and data science, as well as working closely with BIT’s Ventures arm on products and services. We are keen to recruit a candidate with a strong background in behavioural science, project management and applied econometrics in particular.

The role will involve working directly with Chief Scientist to develop and run projects in emerging areas of interest to the team, as well as providing support to a wide variety of projects across the team’s operations in the UK and overseas. You will be expected to work on a wide variety of projects and to provide support including client interaction, project management, trial design, developing interventions, and analysing data. This is a demanding role, and would suit a candidate who is able to multi-task and managing different sets of priorities and stakeholders.

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.

BIT 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.

Our Associate Advisors support work that will help shape UK government policy and influence key strategic policy and operational challenges more widely through the development of innovative interventions that are rigorous and robust.

In this research focused role you will work with BIT’s Chief Scientist to help shape new areas within our research portfolio. This could include helping to develop our work in a new methodology, or working on challenging policy problems such as children’s social care decision making, social inclusion and social mobility. The role will involve close contact with BIT’s Ventures team, which develops products and services based on insights from behavioural science.

As well as working with the Chief Scientist, and the Head of Social Capital, you will be expected to interact with the rest of the Behavioural Insights Team across a wide variety of projects, responding rapidly to requests for evidence and support.

Because this role will work on emerging and new area, the work programme will be highly varied but difficult to predict in advance. Previous roles similar to this, have worked on BIT’s work on social mobility and increasing access to university, developed our partnership with the National Citizens Service, and lead on the development of our start-up ventures, such as Networky and TEST + Build.

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

• Experience in designing and implementing Randomised Controlled Trials, particularly in a policy context;
• Experience in using and analysing large data sets (such as administrative data) modelling;
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills (and will be able to translate academic work to non-academic audiences);
• The ability to work at pace in an fast moving environment with shifting priorities; and
• Experience using software packages for either quantitative analysis (e.g.STATA or R), at an expert or competitive level.

Finally, it would be desirable if you have:

• A Masters or PhD in a relevant subject area (including, in particular economics, with a focus on applied econometrics); and
• Experience in working as a research assistant or in an applied research context.

• 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.
• To find out more about the organisation and the type of people who work in the team visit: www.bi.team
• 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