Senior Research Officer

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

- 382710

**Salary**:

- £42,848
- £42,848 (National Minimum) £47,052 (London Minimum)
- A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

**Job grade**:

- Senior Executive Officer

**Contract type**:

- Permanent

**Business area**:

- Public Transport and Local Group - Public Transport and Rail Strategy and Analysis

**Type of role**:

- Analytical
Social Research

**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

**Number of jobs available**:

- 1

Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Birmingham, Leeds, London

About the job

**Job summary**:
Do you want to use your research skills to help make the transport system better for everyone?

Want to find out what works, for whom, when and why in transport initiatives?

Are you interested in leading evaluation and research to improve the way that rail policies are shaped and delivered?

If so, DfT is now recruiting to fill a Senior Research Officer (SRO) position within the Rail Research and Evaluation Team, and we would love to hear from you

**Job description**:
You will be embedded in the multi-disciplinary Public Transport and Rail Strategy Analysis directorate, which consists of social researchers, economists, statisticians and transport modellers. The Rail Research and Evaluation Team sits within this directorate and is a friendly and inclusive team, with a supportive culture and strong focus on sharing skills and expertise.

We are ambitious about growing the available evidence base for rail, making it a great time to join our team in this varied and interesting role that will provide an opportunity to make use of a range of research and evaluation skills and shape the future of transport policy and investment.

**Responsibilities**

**_ You will:_**
- Design, specify, deliver and disseminate social research and evaluation projects to inform policy priorities. Engage widely with policy partners, analytical colleagues and external stakeholders to identify their evidence needs, shape work and deliver evidence or advice in a fast-paced environment.
- Project and contract manage externally commissioned evaluations to ensure they deliver the required evidence, to a high quality and in line with departmental processes.
- Provide technical advice and analytical assurance on social research and evaluation projects and ensure these are focused on delivering reliable insight and evidence on the questions which are most relevant to achieving the department’s objectives.
- Undertake ad-hoc analysis of rail and/or socio-economic datasets to support the delivery of rail evaluation projects or gather insight for policy colleagues.
- Provide technical support and advice to policy colleagues on research and evaluation methods, including advising on the relative robustness of competing sources of evidence and the interpretation of findings.
- Become an active member of GSR within the department, working with GSR colleagues to find opportunities for cross-cutting work and knowledge sharing.

Please see role profile for full details.

If you would like to find out more about what it's like to work at DfT Rail, please click here.

**Person specification**:
**About you**

We are looking for someone with strong personal impact who can look beyond the the day-to-day priorities and see how your work fits into the bigger picture. You will enjoy proactively taking the initiative to find solutions to problems and have a high attention to detail.

You will have experience of working as a professional researcher or analyst in a social science context, with skills in research, and evaluation as per the requirements of the role profile. You will be skilled in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and able to think creatively with your team about how to support policy colleagues to quickly draw on or gather new evidence to identify learnings.

You will have knowledge of the full research process, from exploration and research design, through execution, reporting and dissemination. You will have a good understanding of the role of the counterfactual for addressing causality and confounding issues in evaluation designs.

You will need strong prioritisation skills to balance competing tasks and deadlines, and an ability to upskill others in research and evaluation methods (analysts and non-analysts).

You will confidently engage colleagues to build positive working relationships with analytical and policy colleagues, internal and external industry partners.
- Knowledge or experience of undertaking spatial analysis and/or using a GIS
- Ability to code in R or a desire to develop R coding skills for data analysis

**Additional information**:
You will have the option to be based in our London office attracting the London salary, or in Leeds or Birmingham attracting the National salary. If based in Leeds or Birmingham, occasional travel to our London offi