Apply before 11:55 pm on Sunday 21st August 2022
Reference number: 226960
Salary: £36,735 – £41,100
Appropriate specialist allowance (Statistics, Operational Research or Social Research) applies to this role. E.g. If applicable, £4,245, or £6k with a Masters, if approved by the relevant HoP
Contract type: Permanent
Working pattern: Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time
Location: Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford
Our Mission
At BEIS, we are leading the UK’s recovery from coronavirus and are building a stronger, greener country. Our varied work makes a real difference to people across the UK and internationally. This is a fantastic opportunity to become part of the BEIS team and our exciting mission!
We lead on the UK’s commitments to tackle climate change and drive green economic growth. We support businesses to create jobs and increase opportunity in regions across the UK. We also encourage investment and innovation to make the UK a science superpower producing research that will improve lives.
Our Inclusive Environment
We are building an inclusive culture to make BEIS a brilliant place to work where our people feel valued, have a voice and can be their authentic selves. We value difference and diversity, not only because we believe it is the right thing to do, but because it will help us be more innovative and make better decisions.
We offer first-class flexible working benefits, excellent employee well-being support and a great pension. We are fortunate to have a range of excellent staff networks and are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader employer. We will support talented people from all backgrounds to build a career and thrive.
We actively welcome applications from anyone who shares our commitment to inclusion. We will fully support candidates with a disability or long-term condition who require adjustments in our recruitment process.
Job description
Use research and analysis to combat climate change ¦ Up to £6,000 pay enhancement ¦ Flexible working ¦ Amazing learning & development opportunities ¦ Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loans ¦
Are you interested in building evaluation and evidence into the heart of innovation and policy making? Are you keen to understand how innovation can help us meet our climate targets?
We are looking for a skilled and dedicated analyst to join the Energy Innovation Evaluation Team. You will embed and manage monitoring and evaluation within the multi-million pound Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, as part of a dynamic and vibrant evaluation community.
We are a team of eight evaluation experts based within a larger collaborative team of analysts including operational researchers, economists, statisticians and social researchers. The wider team provides analytical support to various policy areas contributing to help combat climate change and deliver Net Zero.
The role involves working very closely with the Science and Innovation for Climate and Energy (SICE) Directorate who deliver the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio. Our team supports SICE, playing a fundamental role in embedding and delivering monitoring and evaluation of the varied and exciting energy innovation portfolio.
We pride ourselves on our high quality, innovative and impactful evaluation. Our work enables BEIS to understand how energy innovation programmes are working, the impact they have and how they can be improved.
Responsibilities
The role offers the opportunity to lead on key evaluations for the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP), scoping, developing and delivering impactful evaluations that provide effective understanding and learning for the following key NZIP themes (amongst others):
- Long Duration Energy Storage and flexibility of energy system: Enabling a smarter, more efficient energy system through scaling up flexibility and looking for new storage options.
- Disruptive Technologies: supporting the development and demonstration of state of the art technologies, products and processes in the areas of energy efficiency, power generation and heat and electricity storage, including using innovative finance.
You will provide technical leadership on evaluations and advise on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plans across the portfolio. You will be responsible for scoping M&E plans and revising existing data collection methods and processes. You will work closely with programme leads to ensure that monitoring and evaluation is embedded within the programmes and you will lead analytical quality assurance of the reporting instruments, data, and outputs delivered by evaluation contractors. You will also have an opportunity to undertake analysis of the data, and to ensure that it provides impactful findings.
You will influence business cases for future programmes, ensuring they are evidence based and establish robust M&E processes.
The main duties of this role are:
- Designing and managing M&E projects, with scope to use innovative approaches.
- Being responsible for the management of external contractors delivering research projects. Providing quality assurance of M&E projects to ensure they deliver robust, impactful findings and achieve value for money.
- Building and maintaining collaborative relationships with colleagues in SICE, analysts in BEIS and Innovate UK working on energy innovation and, where relevant, external specialists and academics.
- Promoting and disseminating evaluation findings within SICE and the Department to ensure key learning feeds into ongoing and new policy development and products have maximum impact.
- Playing a key part in the team, sharing and disseminating good practice to other evaluators.
Our team and the wider Directorate are committed to supporting personal development. BEIS has an Evaluation Practitioners Network which meets quarterly and a monthly GSR seminar series to share learning and practice..
Skills and experience
Post holders should have a good grounding in the fundamentals of social research methods but will have the opportunity to develop their skills further and pursue their methodological interests.
We would love to hear from you if you have:
- Experience of designing and leading research or evaluation projects translating policy requirements into robust specifications that will meet customer needs.
- Knowledge of a range of process and impact evaluation methods, and an appetite to work with new methodologies to meet challenges.
- Knowledge of a range of research methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative and evaluation methods.
- Experience of presenting analytical outputs in a range of formats, tailored to different audiences
- The ability to establish good working relationships with policy and analytical colleagues, scheme delivery partners and relevant external agencies