Senior Operational Researcher

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink.

In this role you will lead analytical projects to support evidence-based policy making and decision making in Defra, and you should expect this to take the majority of your time. As a senior operational researcher you will be expected to influence and help develop the team's work plans.

As a member of the OR Hub, you will also be available to support teams and colleagues across Defra with your technical expertise. In the past this has involved teaching, sitting on steering boards, support analytical quality assurance, and supporting the OR community.

The OR Hub is part of Defra's multidisciplinary Analysis and Insight Directorate (AID), which is positioned centrally in the department, giving a broad view of Defra's portfolio and departmental priorities. The OR Hub provides a soft-consultancy service offering OR and data analytics skills to support policy and decision making in Defra, promoting analytical excellence through demonstration.

Encouraging diverse applicants

We recognise the challenges that people with (multiple) protected characteristics may experience on the job market and in their career progression. We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible, and we hope to attract applications from underrepresented groups.

The work that the team takes on is varied, interesting and fast-paced, spanning the full range of OR from soft decision-making techniques through to data science in response to acute, strategic, and crosscutting demands from across the department. Previous projects include rapid analyses for crisis response, multi-criteria decision analyses supporting environmental legislation, land use modelling for Net Zero, analysis of phosphorus levels in wastewater, and the development of a variety of interactive web apps and dashboards for purposes including equalities impact assessments, analysis of consultation responses, and visualisation and interrogation of directed acyclic graphs.

This position offers the opportunity to mentor and line-manage junior ORs as well as leading independent projects and workstreams. An ideal applicant will have a track record of delivering challenging analytical projects, take technical and professional development of themselves and mentees as a priority, and be comfortable working in uncertainty to find creative solutions to the big questions facing Defra.