Director – Work, Financial and Consumer Behaviour NEW

BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS TEAM

We are seeking a highly motivated and client-focused Director to lead the strategic development and operational execution of our Work, Financial and Consumer team (internally known as ‘EPIC’). This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of our consulting and thought leadership offerings, expand our market reach, and ensure the delivery of exceptional research and client projects.

The scope of the team is broad and ambitious:

• Work & productivity: including Labour Market Inactivity, employment practices (de-biasing recruitment & retention, diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, employee engagement), Health & Safety at work
• Financial behaviours: including pensions, scams, gambling, risk-taking behaviours within banks.
• Consumer, business and digital regulation: including organisational behaviour, business productivity.

Our clients range from central government departments, local government innovation, financial institutions, regulators, and multi-national employers. The core theme through all our work is the application of Behavioural Science principles to deliver targeted policy outcomes, and the use of empirical methods to test and iterate to understand want works.

About the BIT:

BIT is a global research and innovation consultancy which uses deep understanding of human behaviour to improve people’s lives. We work with national, regional and local governments, businesses, foundations and charities, to tackle policy problems, often through testing and implementing simple yet powerful changes.

We have about 200 staff based in 8 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific, and have run more than 1000 projects to date, including over 700 randomised controlled trials in dozens of countries. In addition to our own interventions, we openly share expertise and help others build capacity and skills to apply behavioural science.

We are known for our work in the public sector, and yet we do a large range of things for a wide range of clients. We design and rigorously test new ideas across a range of areas such as health, crime and education, to establish what works and what doesn’t. We have helped Tuberculosis patients take their medicine; reduced police susceptibility to cyberattacks; and helped organisations close their gender pay gap. Check out our website for more case studies .

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead efforts to drive sales from new and existing clients across the public, private and charity sector, collaborating closely with the comms/marketing teams.
• Promote BIT offerings to target clients, develop compelling value propositions, fostering strategic relationships, and lead client acquisition efforts for the team.
• Lead proposals and presentations for potential clients, showcasing the expertise and value of BIT.
• Behavioural Science and strategic thinking:
  • Bring deep understanding of Behavioural Science (in one or more of the sectors/ segments listed above).
  • Strive to represent BIT as a leader in our field of Behavioural Science for public good. Create opportunities to share our findings (where confidentiality and client permissions allow).
  • Expand our public profile as the ‘go to’ consultancy for innovative and robust Behavioural Science thinking in the target sectors.
• Delivery Excellence:
  • Oversee the end-to-end design, delivery, and dissemination of client projects to high quality standards, using appropriate frameworks, tools and robust and ethical research methods.
  • Maintain and champion our robust quality assurance processes for all project work.
• Financial and people management:
• Inspire and manage the team to deliver excellence, considering talent profile, recruitment, personal development and progression for team members.
• Manage the P&L for the team, working with the established systems and processes, while considering the pricing of projects, resourcing structures and contractual requirements.
• Collaborate with our group functions (including Finance and HR) to operate effectively within the BIT group.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience (typically 7+ years) in the Behavioural Science sector; deep understanding of the behavioural science literature and practice in one or more of the segments/ sectors listed above. (Note: experience across all sectors is not expected, given the wide breadth of the remit)
• Engaging communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and network effectively with clients and prospects.
• Team leadership skills to motivate and inspire, as well as ensure on-time delivery and high quality work outputs.
• A track record of managing projects and budgets successfully, with strong organisational and problem-solving abilities.
• Commercial acumen with an understanding of sales and delivery of client projects; understanding of commercial contracting and managing aspects of commercial risks throughout the project lifecycle.
• Residency in the UK with the right to work, and ability to be in the office 2 days per week.

Desirable Skills and Experience:

• Formal qualification in Behavioural Science, Social Science, Economics or similar.

What We Offer:

• Work with amazing clients across the private and public sectors, focused on delivering social impact across a wide range of public policy issues from energy and climate change, health and wellbeing, education, work and employment.
• The opportunity to lead and shape a key strategic area of the BIT business and scale our social impact.
• A dynamic, collaborative and supportive work environment, with flexible working, and collaboration opportunities with the charity, Nesta (BIT’s parent organisation).

BIT really is a great place to work:

• Generous pension scheme with 7% employer contribution
• A flexible benefit pot of £1,100 to spend on our flexible benefits programme which currently includes things like the ability to buy extra annual leave at the start of the year, gym membership, cycle to work scheme etc or just take as cash.
• Interest free season ticket loans
• 25 days of annual leave (in addition to public holidays) for full-time employees, rising to 27 days after 2 years continuous service
• We offer enhanced parental leave payments
• We encourage flexible working and have a culture which enables this; for example flexible start and finish times and an IT set up which allows for easy working from home options
• We have regular team lunches with inspirational guest speakers.
• We’re a social bunch and have a variety of interest groups including Film Club, BIT Kids for our parents & 5-a-side team to name a few.
• We have a great office, which has a fabulous roof terrace overlooking the Thames river, an amazing coffee machine, free fruit, pastries and fridges stocked full of soft drinks!

Right to Work in the UK: You will need to already have the right to work in the UK in order to be able to undertake this role. We will ask all applicants to provide evidence of their right to work during the recruitment process.

Privacy and data protection: the personal data you provide to Applied when you apply for a role with The Behavioural Insights Team will be passed on to The Behavioural Insights Team for the purposes of (a) reviewing your application; (b) inviting you for interview; and/or (c) offering you a job and getting you set up as an employee/contractor.For full details on how BIT collects and uses your personal data please visit our website – . If your application is not successful, any personal data provided to us by Applied (including any personal data relating to equal opportunities monitoring as set out above) will be retained by The Behavioural Insights Team for no longer than 6 months after the application deadline has passed (other than in exceptional circumstances where we may need to retain your personal data for longer), at which point your personal data will be securely deleted. We only keep your information for that period in order to allow us to comply with relevant legal obligations.

Offices UK – Manchester UK – London Contract type 39 hours per week – full time Deadline 11th Nov 2025 Salary from £95,000 to £115,000 (London) or from £85,500 to £103,500 (Manchester) per annum FTE (depending on experience), plus benefits and bonus Application link Apply now