Lead Specialist

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 409072

**Salary**:

- £56,745
- A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

**Job grade**:

- Grade 7

**Contract type**:

- Permanent

**Business area**:

- Lead Specialist - Market Insights

**Type of role**:

- Administration / Corporate Support
Business Management and Improvement

**Working pattern**:

- Full-time

**Number of jobs available**:

- 1

**Contents**:

- Location
- About the job
- Benefits
- Things you need to know

**Location**:

- Swindon

**About the job**:
**Job summary**:
**Lead Specialist - Market Insights**:

- The Lead Specialist will deliver insights supporting and evidencing Innovate UK’s future strategic direction._
- Please note this advert will close on the 13th June 2025 at 23.59pm.

**Watch our video “Why Join Innovate UK?”**here**.**

**Title**:Lead Specialist - Market Insights

**Band**:UKRI Band F (UKRI Ts & Cs)

**Salary**:£56,745 gross per annum

**Reports to**:Head of Horizon Scanning

**Location**: Field based

**Contract**: Permanent

Innovate UK recognises the importance of work-life balance and we will be happy to discuss any requests for flexible working arrangements.

**Context**:
This role holder will operate within Innovate UK’s Horizon Scanning team to lead market insights and market-related strategic foresight to influence and evidence Innovate UK’s strategic decisions, including those around Fiscal Event funding allocation.

The Horizon Scanning team is part of the Strategy function. The team comprises experts in both market foresighting and in futures thinking. With a remit to explore potential innovation opportunities across the full breadth of technologies, sectors and industries of the UK economy, the team provides market insights to stakeholders across Innovate UK for strategy development and business case support. As part of its broader insight and horizon scanning activities, the team works with partners including other UKRI Councils, other government agencies, and industry to analyse and characterise the future economy landscape and to recommend and provide evidence for investments in the most promising areas for UK prosperity.

In terms of Innovate UK’s Delivery Plan, the team has a major role in maximising the commercial impact of world-class knowledge developed in UK industries and its research base and in identifying, supporting and growing transforming and emerging industries through innovation.

We particularly welcome female applicants as women are under-represented within Innovate UK in this type of role.

**Job description**:
**Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities**
- To engage with and support senior stakeholders across Innovate UK and UKRI through the provision of market and technology insights to inform decisions about the appropriate scale and balance of support across Innovate UK’s portfolio of funded activities. This will include producing insights on novel, technology-driven markets and various industry sectors to provide evidence of global market size, growth forecasts, UK strengths, innovation challenges and opportunities, innovation market failures, international competitors and leading companies. This will include instances of both primary and secondary research, and requires an ability to interpret customer needs and develop and deliver appropriate data gathering techniques
- There will also be a requirement to customise insights and analytical findings for presentation to a range of audiences, including senior decision-makers
- To support the delivery of futures and horizon scanning activities across Innovate UK, including emerging technology identification, scenario planning and analysis, and future trends identification
- To ensure that best practice in market analysis and insight is embedded across Innovate UK as a critical capability to underpin decision-making. This will include ensuring that relevant staff across the organisation have access to training and guidance in how to conduct market analysis and how to make best use of available resources
- To ensure provision of authoritative, credible market intelligence resources for use by the organisation. This will also include overseeing the procurement and contract management of relevant resources. Activities related to this include producing scopes of work for procuring suppliers, evaluating market-leading suppliers of business data, market research reports and technology trends analysis and ensuring that colleagues have access to a portfolio of resources in line with organisational needs.
- To support colleagues in identifying market failures, and developing strategies and business cases through the provision of high-quality analysis and insights. This will involve working with colleagues across the organisation to keep abreast of strategy and business case development activities and to ensure that robust and timely market intelligence is provided
- Collaborate with and provide analytical support to othe