Research and insights manager

£49,949 per annum, inclusive of London allowance

Sense has a fantastic opportunity for someone to join our team as our Research and insights manager. This is a full time, hybrid role, working 37.5 hours per week based at our offices in Kings Cross, London.

This is an exciting time to join Sense, as we develop and embed our new organisational strategy and strengthen our approach to evidence-led decision making. The role will play a central part in ensuring that insight, data and stories are brought together into a coherent, trusted and accessible evidence base, supporting learning, influencing, bold communications and decision-making across Sense and driving our purpose to break down barriers alongside disabled people with complex needs.

The successful candidate will join a team that is ambitious about using insights, lived experience and stories to drive change, alongside disabled people with complex needs. This is a pivotal role in strengthening how Sense understands what is happening for disabled people with complex needs and their families, and in ensuring that this insight consistently informs strategic decisions across the organisation, as well as providing a bedrock for our influencing work.

• Manage Sense’s research, insight and evidence work, setting clear priorities and ensuring delivery against organisational objectives.
• Line manage and develop research and insight staff (where applicable), creating a high‑performing, collaborative and inclusive team, working closely with teams across social change.
• Build strong working relationships across Sense, ensuring insight and evidence informs strategy, services, influencing, fundraising and communications.
• Work with external partners, research agencies and sector bodies to strengthen Sense’s evidence base and credibility, as well as design fundable insight projects with colleagues.
• Ensure delivery of high‑quality, ethical and inclusive insight, drawing on quantitative data, qualitative research and lived experience.
• Commission and manage surveys, research and evaluations through external agencies and partners, from brief development through to final outputs.
• Manage Sense’s insight, evidence and story assets, including research, surveys, evaluation findings and lived experience insight.
• Work with team members to develop and maintain systems and processes that enable insight, data and stories to be stored, accessed, shared and reused across the organisation.
• Synthesise insight from multiple sources into clear themes, narratives and messages that support strategic decision‑making.
• Ensure that Sense takes a stewardship approach to storytelling, so that lived experience stories are not repeatedly extracted for individual outputs, but are cared for, contextualised and built into a growing, reusable body of organisational insight.

• Significant experience in insight, evidence, research, evaluation or learning roles, with a strong focus on how insight is used to inform organisational decision-making and social change.
• Demonstrable experience of working with lived experience insight, including gathering, analysing and applying qualitative insight in ethical, inclusive and empowering ways.
• Experience of commissioning and managing external research, surveys or evaluations through agencies or consultants, from brief development to final outputs.
• A passionate commitment to take on the barriers disabled people face in society.
• A demonstrable commitment to delivering positive change in the lives of disabled people and their families.
• Knowledge of data protection, consent and ethical standards, particularly in relation to lived experience and storytelling.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills, with the ability to influence and support senior leaders and teams to use insight confidently and appropriately.

For this role we particularly welcome applications from candidates from under‑represented ethnic minority backgrounds and candidates with disabilities. Sense is committed to equality of opportunity, and to promoting and celebrating the diversity of staff, volunteers and the people we work with. Everyone’s contribution is valued and we ensure they are given the opportunity to realise their potential.

Sense is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of vulnerable children and adults and expects all employees to share this commitment. Therefore, all offers of employment, where appropriate, are subject to a DBS check; level dependent on the nature of the role.