Senior Researcher - A Healthy Life

About Nesta

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet.

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation.

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk.

We are seeking a Senior Researcher to work in Nesta’s ‘A Healthy Life’ mission. We want to increase the number of years lived in good health for all. We are focusing on tackling one of the biggest drivers of lost years of healthy life: obesity. Our primary focus currently is on improving our food environments i.e. making healthy food more available, accessible, affordable, appealing and convenient for all. We work across sectors - with businesses, national policymakers, local government, academics and other charities - in order to drive the changes we need to see to improve health.

As a Senior Researcher at Nesta your role will focus on:

• Delivery of research:
  • Conduct statistical analysis and modelling with large, complex datasets to provide novel insights and to understand our food sector partners’ contexts.
  • Develop practical research questions that are aligned to our mission and our food sector partners’ goals.
  • Robustly evaluate outcomes in Python and/or R using collaborative coding.
  • Critically and accurately appraise and summarise existing evidence.
  • Identify appropriate methodologies/approaches that help answer research questions and support effective evaluation.
  • Write detailed research protocols that cover what we’re evaluating, why it needs to be evaluated, and how we will evaluate it.

• Delivery of projects:
  • Build strong relationships with food and health sector partners to ensure the smooth delivery of trials and evaluations.
  • Oversee the implementation of interventions in real-world settings, ensuring strong implementation fidelity.
  • Help ensure the delivery of trials whilst understanding and respecting implementation partners’ challenges and priorities.
  • Own progress against tasks and milestones and communicate these to the project team.
• Communicating and disseminating the team’s work, which may include producing reports and slide decks for partners, writing blogs, public speaking, stakeholder engagement and leading new and creative ways to communicate ideas to different audiences.
• Development of new work, including project idea generation, project scoping, research and writing bids and proposals.
• Support the development of a strong research culture across Nesta, for example through contributing to the delivery of training of colleagues in rigorous and transparent research methodologies, active participation in peer learning sessions, peer-review of analytical work and support for more junior colleagues to build analytical skills.
• Work with a junior colleague and support them in project coordination and management, including liaising with partners, preparing agendas and minutes for meetings, chairing small meetings, and coordinating updates.

Skills and Qualifications

• A Bachelor or Masters qualification in a relevant discipline with a significant quantitative component, and relevant experience in academia, industry or public/third sector

Or

• At least three years of relevant experience in academia, industry or public/third sector

ESSENTIAL

• You can conduct statistical analyses end-to-end, including data wrangling and preparation, designing and implementing a statistical analysis plan, and undertaking and interpreting statistical models.
• Experience with Programming Languages, at a minimum be able to wrangle data and conduct analysis in python or R. We are a python-first team.
• You have a strong foundational understanding of statistics and can effectively interpret and communicate research findings (such as standard deviation, confidence intervals, p values, correlation coefficients, and regression coefficients). .
• Project/ Programme management skills: you can plan work and execute against that plan; identify and act on risks and issues; ensure that key stakeholders are engaged throughout; keep track of spend against budget.
• Ability to quickly build contextual competence in unfamiliar topics (e.g. learn what key jargon means, be credible in conversations with stakeholders, understand what is measured and what is important).
• Ability to quickly synthesise evidence and communicate these in a digestible way for key stakeholders.
• You can report back on research findings in a range of settings, including presentations, slide decks, research reports and blog posts.
• Excellent writing skills to tailor content to different audiences.
• Willingness to be agile and work on a range of projects across the A Healthy Life Team when necessary.
• Knowledge or practical experience in health.

DESIRABLE

• Academic research experience on obesity or food environments, or in an adjacent area like nutrition, health or behavioural science.
• Experience of delivering a research trial from concept to result dissemination - ideally in social sciences and/or through field trials
• Experience programming in python and using Git and GitHub (or equivalent) for version control.
• Other quantitative experience is also valued (eg, advanced data wrangling skills, advanced statistics, familiarity or experience with machine learning methods).
• Experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams making use of mixed research or innovation methods.
• Visual communication or visualisation skills.

What we offer

Salary: £50,700 - £67,800 (offers are expected to be made towards the bottom of the band) plus array of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more

Location: This role is based in London, hybrid working arrangement with a minimum of two days in the office

Term: Permanent contract

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.

Reports to: Principal Researcher, Mission Manager or Principal Data Scientist.

Flexibility: This role is available to be a job-share.

Making an application

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 6th August 2026 at 8am.

The next stage of the application process will be a technical task with interviews taking place in late August. Exact dates to be confirmed.

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.