Nesta is looking for a hands-on Programme Manager to join our Government Innovation Team. You will use your awareness of the challenges currently facing public sector organisations to support our work to help them make smarter use of data to tackle major social challenges.

Our Government Innovation (GI) team is a centre of expertise working across our Policy, Analysis and Research (RAP) team and Innovation Programmes team. This role will focus on the practical experimentation side of Government Innovation’s data work. Over the past 18 months, the Offices of Data Analytics programme has seen GI working to help local authorities and public sector bodies join up, analyse and act upon their data at a city or regional scale. This has included working with 12 London boroughs and the GLA to pilot a London Office of Data Analytics to tackle rogue landlords and helping a police force apply predictive analytics to tackle modern slavery. This role will further this work, ensuring current initiatives are successfully delivered, plus designing future experiments in collaboration with the UK public sector.

About the role
You will deliver on GI’s existing Office of Data Analytics projects, working closely with staff at Nesta’s public sector and data science partners to ensure projects reach a successful conclusion. You will also actively seek new opportunities, partners and sources of funding to help public sector bodies innovate with data and further Nesta’s understanding of this field.

You will seek the best global examples of the effective use of data in any sector that could help inform the design of Nesta’s future experiments, while also regularly blogging and writing occasional summary reports on our progress and representing Nesta to a wide range of audiences through networking and public speaking.

To secure this exciting opportunity
You do not need to be a data scientist, but you must have a sound understanding of data techniques and the ways in which the smarter use of data can help organisations improve their decisions and operations. You are intellectually curious about public service innovation methods and comfortable designing and running programmes in fields that are often complex and occasionally poorly defined.