Research Consultant

Research Consultant

Grow in a role where you design and deliver research, then help shape how it's used.

We're looking for a Research Consultant to join our growing research team. This is a role for someone ready to run the day-to-day delivery of research projects: designing the research, managing fieldwork and working through the analysis, with senior colleagues there to guide and review. Over time, you'll grow into the more strategic and client-facing side of the work. It maps broadly to a Senior Research Executive in a market research agency, and to client-side researchers with two to five years' experience.

You can already run a project, and you're looking for the scope to do more of it. What matters most to us is a genuine passion for high-quality research, and the judgement to reach for whichever method best answers the question rather than an off-the-shelf solution.

ICS is a niche consumer research and strategy consultancy working across regulated sectors and infrastructure: water, energy, transport and housing. We help the UK's leading utility and infrastructure businesses bring the consumer and wider social voice into decisions worth many millions, and often billions, of pounds. Our research sits inside a wider consultancy, so you'd work alongside our economics specialists, regulation specialists and investment planners, and see your evidence feed the strategic plans, long-term strategies and regulatory submissions it was built to inform.

It doesn't just land as a report and get forgotten.

The work is varied, complex and nearly always ad hoc. We talk to consumers and stakeholders about difficult topics, choosing the method to fit each one: how to replace gas boilers, priorities for environmental improvement, options for future water supply. Our findings shape our clients' biggest decisions, and we often present them to senior decision-makers who aren't research experts themselves, so the work has to be both rigorous and clear.

This role is built with a path forward: you start by leading delivery with support, and grow towards owning projects and client relationships as a Senior Consultant.

As a Research Consultant, you'll run the day-to-day delivery of research projects, with senior colleagues there to guide and review. You'll do the core research work, and take on more of the judgement and client-facing work as you develop.

• Design the research. Draft questionnaires, discussion guides and sampling approaches yourself, with senior input coming as an upfront brainstorm or a review of your drafts.
• Set up and run fieldwork. Manage recruitment, fieldwork logistics and external suppliers, and project-manage delivery. You'll conduct some interviews and groups yourself, alongside Senior Consultants, the Research Director and specialist partners.
• Analyse the data. Own the analytical groundwork, from coding and data preparation to producing tables, and turn it into clear, well-evidenced findings.
• Contribute to reporting. Write sections of reports and build the charts and analysis behind them, working to a storyline shaped with senior colleagues.
• Support proposals and scoping. Contribute to winning new work, learning how studies are costed, scoped and pitched.
• Work with clients. Join weekly catch-ups, build genuine working relationships, and present sections of the findings, growing towards leading client conversations yourself.
• Keep projects on track. Own timelines and coordination, and keep delivery moving across projects.

From day one, you'll also have the chance to get involved in our advisory work, where research evidence is turned into the decisions clients act on. That might mean helping a client design how they'll engage their customers over months or years to build the evidence for a major submission; drawing different strands of research together and helping write them into regulatory or strategy documents;

or assurance work, giving clients independent confidence that their evidence is robust and will stand up to scrutiny. You'd start by observing and learning, working alongside the Research Director, Senior Consultants and our economics, regulation and investment planning specialists, with room to take on more over time.

We care more about what you can do than the exact path you've taken. The essentials below are genuine requirements: this is a role for someone who can already run research, not someone learning the…