Circular Economy Senior Evaluation Officer

This is a stretching evaluation role in Defra’s Circular Economy Directorate, sitting in the Strategic Evidence and Analysis Team. It will involve leading on multiple evaluations of key policies that aim to drive towards a circular economy, where more products are repaired, refurbished, reused and recycled, where waste is eliminated, and where materials are kept in circulation at their highest value for as long as possible.

This role will require the senior researcher to lead on the design and scoping of new evaluations, to procure new external projects, and to manage existing projects with external suppliers to deliver high-value and high-profile evaluations across the Directorate. This is a stretching and exciting role for an SEO social researcher interested in delivering evaluation.

This role will involve developing new evaluation plans for all upcoming priority Circular Economy policies, as well as delivering established complex and high-profile evaluations in the Directorate. The role includes leading on the externally commissioned Circular Economy Pathfinders project, which will deliver strategic insights, research and evaluation elements into the place-based strand of Circular Economy programme. This is a multi-year project that will provide expert, bespoke evaluation support to a number of localised, community-level circular initiatives across England.

The role will involve the exciting opportunity of leading on the evaluation of pilot projects across the Directorate, using experimental research designs such as randomised controlled trials. This will require working with external suppliers to design and deliver new interventions at a localised scale, obtaining evidence among intervention groups and control groups, and understanding whether policies merit being scaled to national level.

The senior evaluation officer will also provide evaluation expertise on the flagship Resources and Waste Policy Programme Evaluation in the Directorate, which looks to evaluate the success of Defra’s large-scale reforms in the waste infrastructure sector, including the policies Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging, the Deposit Return Scheme, Simpler Recycling, and Digital Waste Tracking. Together, this work is critical for supporting Defra and other government departments to make decisions on policy design, delivery, and overall approach to achieving circularity.

As part of this role, the senior evaluation officer will:

• Develop their experience of designing complex evaluation projects.
• Develop their project management skills due to delivering multiple high priority projects simultaneously.
• Apply research and evaluation frameworks to ensure evidence can be delivered on whether policies are delivered as expected and are delivering key outcomes.
• Apply quasi-experimental evaluation designs including randomised controlled trial methodologies to derive robust impact evaluation evidence that supports evidence-based decision‑making and policy roll out.
• Work with internal and external stakeholders to ensure evaluation meets policy and stakeholder needs, and is delivered with key voices feeding in.

Key deliverables that the role is responsible for include:

• Managing the multi‑year Pathfinders evaluation, including managing external suppliers to deliver three strands of the project and working closely with local projects on understanding the impacts of locally delivered circular projects.
• Delivering robust randomised controlled trial evidence for new pilots to inform policy decision‑making.
• Providing evaluation expertise on the established Resource and Waste Policy Programme Evaluation.
• Designing and planning for upcoming evaluation projects, including preparing this for procurement and managing the externally delivered evaluation.
• Ad‑hoc evaluation activity such as production of Theories of Change, identification of indicators, and designing of evaluation plans and frameworks in collaboration with policy and delivery colleagues.