Associate Director, Research and Innovation (Permanent & 12 month FTC)

Our Associate Directors of Research and Innovation are the senior project leaders who drive delivery of the funded projects that make up our overall programme. The role requires a mix of research and innovation leadership, excellent communications and networking skills, and the ability to drive projects to deliver policy and market change to make a positive difference to people’s financial security and financial wellbeing. You will work across some or all of the following areas:  

Financial Resilience: Our work in this area focuses on identifying solutions and interventions to help people to manage financial shocks or volatility without recourse to damaging solutions such as high-cost credit

Savings: Millions of people in the UK lack cash savings, which enable them to self-ensure against shocks and build foundations for longer-term saving and asset-building. Our work in this area identifies, tests and promotes adoption of solutions that support people to build cash savings.

Assets, wealth and pensions: Auto enrolment has brought millions of people into building invested wealth for the first time. But in most cases, this remains the only wealth they have. Our work in this area addresses approaches to building out asset-ownership including housing and non-pension investments. It also seeks to address those groups, such as the self-employed, where pension saving lags behind those included in auto enrolment, as well as on how to optimise the design of AE in future to balance adequacy and financial resilience trade-offs.

Foundational and cross-cutting research: These are additional projects and programmes that we undertake to increase overall understanding of the challenges facing low- moderate- and volatile-income households and the ways different parts of household money-management interact. This includes innovative approaches like our ongoing programme of work to connect public and private survey and administrative data sets, targeted in-depth qualitative research and household-level transaction tracking to enable holistic research of household financial behaviours and how household balance sheets react to policy change.

You will work closely with the other Associate Directors and the Director of Research and Innovation to ensure not only that individual projects deliver maximum impact and exceed funder expectations, but that the overall programme of work adds up to more than the sum of its parts, positioning Nest Insight to have influence on behalf of low- and moderate income households right across the financial security agenda.

Key responsibilities of the role will include:

• With the Director of Research and Innovation; scoping and overseeing delivery of a high-profile research and innovation programme supporting financial security for low- and moderate income households in the UK.
• Contributing to the overall aims and strategy of Nest Insight and to its reputation for research excellence, real-world solution development and high-quality thought leadership and debate.
• Directing specific high-profile, high-impact research and innovation projects, working collaboratively with project partners, ensuring they are successfully delivered on time and on budget with funders and stakeholders engaged throughout.
• Line and/or matrix-managing small project teams, supporting their personal and professional development and directing their work to a high standard.
• Designing robust and creative mixed-method research approaches including qualitative and quantitative research, behavioural trials, pilots, desk research expert interviews, secondary data analysis and data science projects working with our specialist Research Leads drawing on their expertise and advice.
• Building our network, establishing and developing strong relationships with a wide range of funders, collaborators, delivery partners and academic research partners and building trusted relationships across policy and industry stakeholder groups.
• Working with Development and Fundraising colleagues to build string relationships with our funders and to support with pipeline development and funding proposals.
• Working with communications colleagues both embedded in projects and in the central comms team to shape and deliver communications and engagement strategies for the insights that emerge from our projects. Delivering high-quality, influential communications and engagement outputs for a variety of audiences, focused specifically on our key audiences of senior political and industry decision-makers - including published reports, blog posts, summary papers, infographics, films, events, external speaker opportunities etc.
• Acting as an engaging and credible spokesperson for the work of Nest Insight including at conferences, events and round tables, in advisory and steering groups and with the media. Leading debate and consensus building in key areas of our work.
• Ensuring high ethical, data protection and information security standards across the programme.
• Developing Nest Insight’s research and innovation capability, approaches and resources. Supporting team members to develop. Sourcing, appointing and managing partners and suppliers in line with managing public money and other relevant requirements.
• Identifying new areas of work and developing new research and innovation questions and proposals.
• Deputising for the Director of Research and Innovation when required.
• Bringing deeper expertise in one or more of our research and/or innovation methods or in key data sources, and acting as an internal consultant across all projects on the use and application of those methods and sources.
• The Candidate Pack is attached with more detailed information on the role and the team.
  
  
  We are open to discussing working patterns.   We welcome all internal applicants to apply for our roles, regardless of your current working pattern or hours. We will aim to accommodate your request and match your current working arrangements.   Don't worry if you think you don't have all the key skills, it might be worth taking the few minutes to apply as we're good at spotting potential and offer a generous training budget.  
  
  Please download a full job description to find a full scope, deliverables, experience and personal attributes required for this role.   
  
  Reward and recognition
   
• • A discretionary bonus scheme
  • Reward and recognition scheme
  • Enhanced auto enrolled pension – your contributions start at the default 5% while ours are higher at 8%. If you up your contributions to 6% we raise ours to 9%. If you contribute 7% or more we’ll contribute 10%.
  • Income protection scheme – is an insurance benefit that provides you with income if you cannot work due to illness or incapacity.

  Flexible and agile working

  Everyone's personal situation is different.

  To make the most out of hybrid working, we've introduced different ways of working, which include (subject to role requirements):

  hybrid of office (Canary Wharf, London) and home working (there will be an expectation to attend the office, once - twice a week, or more, as required)  reduce or vary working hours reduce or vary the days worked work compressed hours job share   For more information about our recruitment process click here