We’re hiring a funding programme designer

By Science Practice, 20 August 2020

Join our Good Problems Team to help us design a more inclusive, transparent, and strategic funding sector.

Permanent (3-month probation)
Full time (40 hours per week)
£35k - £42k
Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements
Location: London, Old Street (we are open to other arrangements; as a result of COVID-19, the team is currently working remotely for the foreseeable future)

To apply, please submit your details via this form. The deadline for applications is 9am on Tuesday, 8 September 2020. We will review applications on a rolling basis.

About us

Our Good Problems Team at Science Practice works with science and innovation funders to design effective programmes to tackle important problems. We have designed over 40 innovation programmes, including challenge prizes – such as the £10M Longitude Prize – and innovation funding calls around problems in healthcare, food and water sustainability, transportation, and humanitarian aid. Our clients include Wellcome Trust, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, and Nesta.

Our ambition is to improve the philanthropic sector by supporting funders to make more inclusive, collaborative, and evidence-based funding decisions to tackle the problems that matter most.

We are a dedicated team of four with skills ranging across information and interaction design, research, innovation, strategy, social entrepreneurship, and programming.

Right now, we’re scoping opportunities for public engagement in health research, designing sandpits around nutrition and diets, and designing an upcoming innovation challenge for the humanitarian sector.

The role

We are looking for someone to join our team and help us design impactful, problem-led funding programmes.

As a programme designer, you will be working on client-facing projects in a small team of two or three, or will lead projects with support from the wider team.

You will have an opportunity to work across diverse domains; at the moment, we are focusing on a range of healthcare topics (eg, vaccines, mental health, nutrition) and humanitarian challenges (eg, sanitation, sexual and reproductive health).

We are looking for someone available to start in early September 2020.

The role will include the following activities:

Conducting desk research and interviews with diverse stakeholders to better understand specific problems.
Synthesising research insights into compelling and engaging materials for senior decision-makers.
Helping funders prioritise problems they are best placed to address (alone or in collaboration with others).
Developing strategic recommendations for funders on how to respond to identified/prioritised problems or gaps.
Designing innovative funding programmes to address identified/prioritised problems. Testing proposed programmes through interviews and workshops.
Designing and facilitating workshops to gather feedback on priority problems or programme designs.

We’re looking for someone who:

Has strong research skills and enjoys exploring new topics through a range of research methods including desk research and interviewing diverse actors such as scientists, policy-makers, people with lived experience, industry representatives, and civil society.
Has experience designing funding programmes or programmes to incentivise innovations (eg, funding calls, prizes, competitions, accelerators).
Is interested in the philanthropic sector and motivated by improving how funding decisions are made and resources allocated.
Is naturally curious and interested in making connections between ideas, practices, and people from across different fields.
Writes well and communicates complex subject matter in simple, engaging language.
Is comfortable with scientific subject matter (in particular, health research).
Can rapidly gain an understanding of new topics in unfamiliar domains and make judgements based on complex evidence.
Is excited about engaging with domain experts, other organisations and the general public through talks, workshops, events, and social media.

We are keen to hear from a range of applicants, not just those with explicit programme design experience. We are particularly interested in researchers or service designers interested in applying their skills to the development of impactful and evidence-led funding programmes.

We are a small but committed team. To help us evolve our practice and achieve our ambitions, we are looking for a new team member who will challenge us, build alongside us, and play an active role in shaping our ideas, practices, and approaches.

Right to work

In order to apply for this job, you should have the right to work in the UK.

How we work

Our approach to working is open, agile, and iterative. This means that you will work closely with the team and clients to understand the challenges they face, develop programmes, and iterate on these based on ongoing conversations and feedback.

We have weekly team catch-ups on Mondays to plan the week and on Fridays to reflect, as well as daily stand-ups to check in with the team and plan the day. We also run a weekly Journal Club to delve deeper into topics that shape our practice.

Every quarter, we have team and individual reviews to reflect on what went well, what we can improve on and how we’re achieving our strategic ambitions as a team.

We aim to keep our work setup lean and simple. We use Slack, G Suite, and Airtable.

What we are offering

A competitive salary and matched pension contributions.
Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements.
The opportunity to grow your skills and professional interests as part of a curious, supportive, and dedicated team.
All our activities are currently online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before all this, we would say in this final point something about our lovely London studio filled with cheese plants, snacks, and colleagues from our sister company Ctrl Group who develop digital health products. While we are unable to offer this space at the moment, we look forward to introducing our cheese plants to new faces as soon as it will be safe to do so. 🌱

How to apply

We value diversity at our company. This is core to our work as developing a robust understanding of problems requires a diversity of thought, experience, and perspectives. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and ages.