Evaluation / Economist - Associate Director in London

Evaluation Associate Director – Economy & Environment – Public Affairs

Make Your Mark at Ipsos. Ipsos UK Public Affairs are leaders in social research and evaluation. We are looking for an Associate Director to join our highly successful Policy and Evaluation Unit. The team is multi-disciplinary of economists and evaluation specialists who work across all areas of public policy.

This is an exciting opportunity for a commercially minded Evaluator with a good understanding of economic policy, including market barriers and challenges and why Government might intervene (strategic case assessments). The role will suit someone with a passion for policy themes including innovation, regional economic development, industrial and infrastructure policy, business and competition.

What is in it for you?

• Work on an expanding portfolio of complex evaluations of high-profile energy and civil infrastructure projects and industrial policies.
• Opportunity to support the growth of this portfolio by leading evaluations of major interventions aimed at tackling the challenges of achieving net zero, energy security, and addressing the UK’s stagnating productivity growth.
• Chance to enhance and grow your commercial skills.
• Work on a range of complex central government contracts.
• Lead the delivery of complex evaluation projects, ensuring alignment across teams, effective client engagement, and strong commercial management throughout the project lifecycle.

About the Role

As an Evaluation specialist, you will take leadership on evaluation projects falling within our economy and environment policy division. You will be supporting an established team of evaluators and policy specialists and will be confident applying quantitative impact evaluation methods and theory-based approaches to complex evaluation problems.

The main responsibilities of the role are:

• Managing and directing evaluations through the full project cycle from design to data collection and analysis, through to developing conclusions and recommendations.
• Drafting engaging and persuasive publishable outputs.
• Presenting the findings from evaluation to clients, key stakeholders and other audiences.
• Taking editorial leadership and design oversight on successful evaluation proposals and pitches (£500,000 - £750,000 in gross value terms) with support from our senior directors.
• Collaborating with colleagues across our Public Affairs division, as well as external partners.
• Providing specialist expertise in a policy or methodological area.
• Contributing to the development of evaluation skills across our Public Affairs division.
• Working alongside the Senior Management Team in the strategic and operational management of the Policy and Evaluation Unit.
• Supporting senior staff in the team to manage the well-being and job satisfaction of junior team members.

About You

This role will suit candidates who enjoy working closely with clients in a fast-paced environment. We are looking for someone with:

• A passion for policy themes including innovation, regional economic development, industrial and infrastructure policy, business and competition.
• A commercial mindset in delivering research and evaluation, and a thirst for growing a business.
• A masters degree or higher-level qualification in economics or related discipline.
• Good knowledge and experience of both quantitative and qualitative (i.e. mixed-method) approaches.
• Proven ability to manage and deliver projects to timescale and budgets with limited director supervision.
• Proven ability to lead winning evaluation proposals.
• Confident and clear written and verbal communication skills.

In addition, the candidate would ideally have:

• Proven skills in the application of econometric methods to complex programme evaluation problems.
• Expertise in cost-benefit analysis and the application of HMT Green Book.

Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support you as an individual. Our standard benefits include 25 days annual leave, pension contribution, income protection and life assurance. In addition, there are a range of health & wellbeing, financial benefits and professional development opportunities. We realise you may have commitments outside of work and will consider flexible working applications - please highlight what you are looking for when you make your application. We have a hybrid approach to work and ask people to be in the office or with clients for 3 days per week.

We are committed to equality, treating people fairly, promoting a positive and inclusive working environment and ensuring we have diversity of people and views. We recognise that this is important for our business success - a more diverse workforce will enable us to better reflect and understand the world we research and ultimately deliver better research and insight to our clients. We are proud to be a member of the Disability Confident scheme, certified as Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. We are dedicated to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process.