Responsibilities

As part of our growing R&D team, we are looking for someone with a strong research background (i.e. postgraduate degree or equivalent professional research experience) to lead science and research across our venture-builder programmes. This role is ideally suited to someone who has some experience working in applied (ideally commercial) settings, and with excellent research translation, application and communication skills. This is a full-time role, based in London.

The successful applicant will work closely with the R&D and venture-builder teams, as well as our wider network of experts, to:

• Prioritise and signpost to key opportunity areas and avenues for innovation within each of our four missions
• Build the curriculum of content for the programme, linking with external experts
• Work with the entrepreneurs (through 1:1 work as well as training and workshops) to build an evidence-based understanding of the problem, develop and test new ideas, and build a plan for impact measurement
• Support our user research activities, working with others in the R&D team to ensure that our emerging ventures have access to tools, methods and governance processes to run research effectively and ethically
• Contribute to our internal library of research resources for our entrepreneurs and ventures
• Disseminate learning relating to specific research projects (e.g. learnings from user testing a new product), as well as insights on the process of embedding research in new ventures
• Identify avenues for further research and funding
• Support the management of various time-limited project-based roles (e.g. PhD student placements)

Requirements

This role would suit an individual with a strong scientific background, and ideally some experience of working with early-stage innovators, product developers and/or entrepreneurs.

We are looking for someone with the following skills/experience/attributes:

• Ability to translate findings from scientific papers, expert consultations and user research into actionable design recommendations and product adaptations;
• Experience in a range of research methods, and comfortable leading user research projects
• Comfortable working with people from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (e.g. education, marketing, design, UX research, engineering, data science, etc.);
• Motivated to contribute to areas beyond specialist responsibilities and comfortable with variety in your day-to-day role;
• Comfortable with ambiguity, and able to plan and execute work in a fast-paced, agile environment, working to tight and often-changing timelines;
• Team player, who is happy to work with the Zinc team and our ecosystem in a proactive and constructive way;
• Effective organiser and proactive ‘do-er’, with excellent organisation skills and a hands-on, positive approach - able to use initiative to make decisions;
• Passion for Zinc’s missions, and the potential for commercial startups to positively impact the lives of millions of people;
• Some management experience is desirable.