Senior Analyst

About Nesta

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start; help people live healthy lives; and create a sustainable future.

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions; as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses; and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation.

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at www.nesta.org.uk

About A Fairer Start mission

We want every child to have the fairest possible start in life, so they can thrive and realise their potential. Nesta’s A Fairer Start Mission is on a 10-year endeavour to close the gap in school readiness between those growing up in poverty and their peers across the UK. To achieve this, we focus our work on strengthening the support that disadvantaged families receive to improve the home learning environment, cope with financial pressures and/or access high-quality formal childcare. Leveraging Nesta’s multiple capabilities, we use a multi-pronged approach to maximise the chances that change happens. For example, we work with families and frontline partners to design and deliver interventions to support the home learning environment, and evaluate their effectiveness at scale; we study the impacts of existing policies to make policy recommendations; we invest in ventures to create social impact through business; we build coalitions and campaigns to shift attitudes and norms. Whatever the approach we take, we strive to be evidence-led and impact-focused, and to measure the impact of our activities on our mission goal.

About the role

The following list sets out the core tasks the Senior Analyst (Maternity Cover) will be expected to participate in. We expect our senior analysts to take more of a lead role in these tasks. We don’t expect you to be an expert at this stage, but we want you to come to Nesta ready to experiment and learn.

Your main role in the team will be to support the delivery of projects - applying your analysis, research and policy knowledge to help us make progress on our key strategic focus areas .

The following are some examples of the sorts of projects you might be expected to contribute to, dependent upon your skills and experience

• Working with external sector stakeholders to define a national policy framework which supports high-impact integration of the family support system in the early years.
• Analysis of how we might improve the childcare funding system in service of our mission goal.
• Analysing national datasets to better understand the needs of children and families that the Fairer Start mission focuses on.

Tasks may include:

• Quantitative analysis - you understand statistical methods to perform correlational and causal analysis. You are comfortable with managing, cleaning and analysing a range of datasets and with interpreting statistical analysis. You are willing to learn about new methods that you don’t know.
• Primary research - including interviews, observations, basic data analysis, case studies.
• Secondary research - including critically appraising and summarising existing evidence on a given problem. You should be able to interpret common research statistics, critique research designs and evaluate the strength of existing evidence.
• Project management - you can manage projects from start to finish, are willing to learn to use project management tools (we use Asana), can proactively mitigate project risks and work as part of a multidisciplinary team
• Stakeholder management - you can work closely with internal and external stakeholders in project delivery, provide clear updates on project progress, prepare meeting agendas and action points and are comfortable with the upwards management of stakeholders
• Communication - disseminate the team’s work externally, which may include producing reports and slide decks for partners, writing blogs, public speaking, stakeholder engagement and leading new and creative ways to communicate ideas to different audiences.
• Domain knowledge - get to grips with new areas, topics and contexts that the range and variety of your projects take place in.
• Solution development - help to devise novel solutions to problems, pilot or prototype these before implementation, and evaluate whether or not they worked using rigorous experimental study design
• Project ideation - supporting development of new work, including project idea generation, project scoping, research and writing bids and proposals.

The person

• Analytical skills: You are able to identify issues within particular policy areas, analyse their origins through research and stakeholder engagement, and contribute to suggesting solutions and/or creating frameworks to creating solutions.
• Research skills: You understand the fundamentals of quantitative research and evaluation and can develop hunches or take a well evidenced position based on such research. For example, you can interpret research findings of others, understand common statistics (such as standard deviation, confidence intervals, p-values, and correlation coefficients), assess the strength of evidence for something, understand good practice for key research activities (such as interviewing).
• Coding skills: you are comfortable in at least one widely used coding language (e.g. R, Python) and willing to learn Python if you don’t know it.
• Presentation skills: you can report back on research findings in a range of settings, including presentations, slide decks, research reports and blog posts
• Project management skills: you can plan work and execute against that plan; identify and act on risks and issues; ensure that key stakeholders are engaged throughout; keep track of spend against budget.
• Stakeholder management: you can manage stakeholder’s expectations over the course of a project, keeping them up to date and drawing attention to difficulties/dependencies. You are credible in conversations with stakeholders and are able to get to grips quickly with their priorities.
• Domain knowledge: knowledge or experience in the practice, policy or research context of the Fairer Start mission. This might include through previous work, research, study, or personal experience working in the early years and/or education sectors.

Desirable

• Knowledge of early childhood development and UK early years policy, particularly integrated family support (e.g. Sure Start, Family Hubs) and/or childcare system
• Experience of working in a policy context for a consultancy, think tank or other fast paced research environment.
• Experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams making use of mixed research or innovation methods.
• Expertise in conducting qualitative research.
• Facilitation skills, e.g. running workshops.
• Excellent writing skills to tailor content to different audiences.
• Visual communication skills (e.g. advanced PowerPoint, data visualisation).

What we offer

Salary: circa £47,900 plus array of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more

Location: This role is based in Blackfriars, London, hybrid working arrangement with a minimum of two days in the office

Term: Maternity cover

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.

Reports to: Principal Researcher

Making an application

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8.00am on the 18th July 2024.

Interviews will take place on w/c 29 July 2024.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.