Research and Innovation Lead

Overview:
Optivo Housing are looking for Research and Innovation Leads to work on a full time, permanent basis. This is a remote working role with occasional meetings at offices in either Croydon or Sittingbourne.

These roles will suit individuals with a background in market research / insight / data analysis with an understanding and experience of designing services.

Job purpose:

• Lead research and analysis to establish a foundation for evidence based solutions and make recommendations to improve user experience and efficiency
• Deliver exceptional customer focused service and ensure the reputation of the team is maintained and enhanced at every opportunity
• Support the wider business change and transformation process to develop ideas into solutions
• Use the latest design thinking and service design methods to create an exceptional user experience in an efficient way and to make a positive difference to people's lives
• Lead service design reviews and develop the service design programme.

Promote design thinking and service design at Optivo.

Person specification:

Knowledge

• A design thinking, or service design qualification or equivalent is desirable.
• Understand housing, Registered Social Landlords, and the wider housing market
• Hands on experience of innovation and prototyping and testing new services.
• Experience of working with and managing research providers and other suppliers.
• An understanding and experience of service design and innovation methods, tools and techniques.

Skills

• Strong analytical and problem solving skills for structuring approaches to complex problems.

• Significant hands on experience of a full range of research methodologies.

• Good negotiation skills, ability to build positive relationships and get buy in.
• Good project management and organisational skills.
• Strong writing skills and an ability to present findings in ways that are clear, compelling and credible.

Abilities

• Ability to handle large complex data sets and present analysis in a clear and engaging way
• Ability to build strong relationships and trust and ability get buy in at all levels
• Experience of developing processes and systems for managing data - including how it is collected, stored and used.
• Experience of using primary and secondary data sources - including open data - and combining different data sources for analytical purposes.
• Experience of evaluation methods and knowledge of developing social impact measures such as Cost Benefit Analysis, SROI and longitudinal studies.