Programme Manager

Programme Manager, InFuse (Data)

Nesta role

Salary - £38k - £54k, plus excellent benefits

Closing date 1 Feb 2021, 8 a.m.

Fixed term contract 37.5 hours

Cardiff, Wales

Are you a motivated, dynamic and organised individual with strong project and programme management skills, including managing budgets, suppliers and reporting impact? Are you a natural collaborator, with a history of developing partnerships across a wide range of organisations?

If so, Nesta and Y Lab are looking for an experienced Programme Manager to join our delivery team on InFuSe (Innovative Future Services) – an ambitious new European Social Fund Priority 5 funded initiative to build innovation skills and capacity in public services across the Cardiff Capital Region.

About Nesta and Y Lab

Our vision is that by 2030, Nesta will have improved the lives of millions of people by designing, testing and scaling new solutions to society’s biggest challenges.

We have chosen to focus on three guiding missions – a fairer start, building healthier lives, and supporting a sustainable future. In each of these areas, we will partner with frontline organisations to generate and rigorously evaluate new interventions, and support their widespread adoption. We will support the creation of new products and ventures, and shape the system as a whole to support innovation.

Working with a range of delivery partners, we will deploy multi-disciplinary teams that bring together capabilities in design, data science, behavioural insights, experimental research, and arts and culture methods. We believe that by bringing together innovation methods to design, experiment, rigorously evaluate, and scale innovations, we can be a world leader in driving innovation for social good.

Y Lab is the public service innovation lab for Wales and is a collaboration between Nesta and Cardiff University. We make lives better by improving public services for the people who use and deliver them. We do this by running programmes and undertaking research that build innovation capacity and support the creation, testing and implementation of new ideas. InFuSe is a partnership between the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal, Monmouthshire County Council, Cardiff University and Y Lab (Nesta and Cardiff University).

About this exciting opportunity

This multi-faceted role will see you lead a stream of work, designing and delivering a high-quality programme that encourages regional partnership and problem-solving whilst building innovation skills and capacity in one of three specific streams of work. You will also design, plan and facilitate workshops that provide participants with actionable skills that they can practice in a safe and supported environment, then take into their daily work, plus:

• Coach and help teams of practitioners to reach their full potential and be able to share their impact
• Support teams to tell robust, data-backed stories about their interventions and new ways of working
• Build productive relationships with our core partners and participants within the programme
• Represent Y Lab and the programme externally in Wales: ensuring that our work is communicated effectively, identifying target audiences and developing strategies to engage and influence them

What we are looking for

You will have demonstrable knowledge of either how to set up and run experiments and R&D projects in public services; the role of data in making better decisions in public services; or the role of (and opportunities for more) innovative procurement practices to deliver improved public services and support innovation in public services.

An excellent communicator, with strong presentation and blogging skills, you will also have experience of coaching and training, an appreciation of how to support public services to develop and deploy new innovation skills, and experience of carrying out high-quality research/insight work, and/or commissioning research in emerging fields.

How to Apply

Please complete the application form on our website.

The closing date for applications is 1 February 2021 at 8:00am.

First interviews will be held w/c 1 February 2021 (via Zoom).

Second interviews will be held w/c 8 February 2021 (via Zoom).

Please note that we are open to secondments.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.

Please note: After the job advert closes, your answers will go through a sift process: randomising and anonymising answers for taking out individual information that biases hiring decisions and facilitating us to review each answer by more than one person so you can benefit from the wisdom of the crowds. People scoring the applications will not have seen your CV at this stage so please try your best to answer questions without rephrasing your CV, they will see this later! More about the principles behind the blind review process.