Researcher

Location

Remote | United Kingdom

Job description

Researcher 

This is a permanent, full-time role (35 hours per week)
Flexibility around working hours (to be discussed at interview) 

Home based:  The Foundation team works on a remote basis with team meetings held regularly in London or Norwich. Meetings are also sometimes held at the MCS Service Company base near Warrington. The postholder should expect to travel within the UK at least once or twice a month on average for meetings or events.

Are you looking for a role that will jump start your professional career helping to tackle the climate emergency? This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in a leading UK charity working on decarbonising homes, heat and energy. 

The MCS Foundation is seeking a Researcher to support our work. The postholder will support our work delivering the devolved campaigns and group research functions for The MCS Foundation. The role will work across the Foundation group (the Charity and its trading subsidiary, MCS Service Company), which works to influence public policy and deliver programmes to accelerate the drive for net zero carbon emissions.

About Us 

The MCS Foundation is an independent UK-wide charity working to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy and low carbon technologies. Homes account for around 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions, so our sector has a crucial role to play in the drive for net zero. As an organisation with strong links to government, industry and the NGO sector, we have a leading role to play in driving that change. 

The Foundation was set up by the UK Government in 2018 to take ownership of the MCS standards scheme – now run through MCS Service Company – and use the scheme’s surplus income to invest in initiatives that support growth in the sector. We now have an established grants and research programme focused on initiatives that can drive a step-change impact.

The MCS Foundation and MCS Service Company have a shared group external affairs strategy aimed at using our leading position in the sector to advocate for the policy changes needed to deliver the net zero target. Some of our campaigns focus on: introducing strong regulations to embed net zero requirements in new build homes; working for comprehensive public engagement services and green finance packages to enable the mass scale retrofitting of homes across the UK. 

Through our Launchpad programme, MCS Group is convening our sector to address some of the key barriers to mass scale deployment, particularly in the fields of green jobs and supporting the development of mass retrofit plans at local level.

About the Role 

The Researcher post is a new position that will play a key role in supporting the delivery of the Foundation’s group external affairs and launchpad strategies. The postholder will work across a range of themes relevant to renewable technologies, housing retrofit and green jobs, supporting the objectives of the Foundation to decarbonise homes, heat and energy. You will work closely with colleagues across the group and partner organisations, helping to deliver our policy objectives. 

You should be prepared to attend major events like party conferences, parliamentary and report/project launch events and prepare research briefings to support the work of the External Affairs team. The role will involve working with major environmental NGOs and key institutional partners, building good relationships with their research teams. The role will also promote and highlight our grants programme and the projects associated with the Foundation’s Launchpad. Working in a small but rapidly growing team, you will be instrumental in supporting the delivery of our programmes, policy and campaigns.

The brief for the role is UK-wide so will incorporate the policy landscapes in devolved nations and regions. 

About the Candidate 

The ideal candidate will be educated to degree level or equivalent, with demonstrable experience of a range of research methods, ideally including both quantitative and qualitative methods.

You will be passionate about addressing climate change and advancing the Foundation’s mission with strong ethics and social responsibility.

In addition, you should have: 

• Experience of the parliamentary process and how advocacy campaigning works. 
• Proven ability to handle complex subjects identifying key issues, and communicate in clear way to make any research and reports accessible for political and key audiences, including industry, supporters, politicians, civil servants, business etc. 
• Able to work unsupervised and manage their priorities to meet deadlines 
• Work as part of a team 
• Able to communicate effectively at a senior level on policy, research and campaign objectives to a range of audiences 
• Campaign experience within an NGO, scientific, climate change, campaigning or political environment would be an advantage. 
• Confident user in MS Office and Windows applications. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Work across the Foundation providing research support to the External Affairs team to help them deliver the political advocacy engagement strategies and research needed to highlight our solutions 
• Create research briefings based on clear scientific evidence-based work to inform and develop our position, supporting our ambition as the go to organisation on zero carbon homes and renewables. 
• Attend research meetings across the sector through installers, associations, business, NGOs and Government.
• Support the production of reports, political briefings, fact sheets. 
• To build strategic research and academic relationships to forward the research goals and objectives of the organisation. 
• To represent the organisation and help organise and take part in public facing events when needed, to give presentations and act as a representative of MCS where appropriate 
• To support the policy research function across the whole MCS group, including the responses to government and statutory consultations across all of the devolved nations. 
• The postholder will be expected to develop knowledge of, and keep abreast of relevant developments across the homes, renewables and climate change sector.
• Build up knowledge and expertise in the campaign areas. 
• Undertake any other duties as directed by the Director of External Affairs 

At MCS Foundation we care about our employees, this is reflected in our employee benefits and policies:

• 25 days’ annual leave per annum – increasing to 28 days with 3 years’ service, and to 30 days with 5 years' service
• 8% company pension contribution
• Access to and support with continuous professional development
• Access to salary sacrifice schemes, such as Cycle2Work
• Fully expensed Christmas party
• Payment of one professional subscription 
• Medicash Annual Subscription
• Access to a Mental health first aider and a Menopause champion
• Provision of free fruit, tea and coffee, soft drinks, breads and spreads, and breakfast when you visit the office
• An innovative office environment that encourages collaboration
• Supportive HR policies including enhanced maternity/paternity leave, sick leave, and emergency paid leave

Application Process

Please submit your current CV and a letter of application detailing how your skills and experience meet the requirements of this role.  All applications to be sent to: [email protected]

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Job tags

Salary

£23k per annum