Monitoring and Evaluation lead analyst – Advanced Manufacturing

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) was established to drive good growth, good jobs and opportunity across the UK. We support businesses to invest, innovate, export and grow, powered by science and technology.

This is a high profile, influential role to lead and deliver monitoring and evaluation of multi-billion-pound programmes in the Advanced Manufacturing sector.

Advanced Manufacturing is central to economic growth and productivity in the UK. It is one of the eight priority sectors in the industrial strategy and is at the heart of BIST’s role as the department for economic growth.

In this policy-facing role, you will lead a team of social researchers and analysts to design and deliver high profile evaluations of Advanced Manufacturing programmes and to conduct and commission research. You will work directly with policy colleagues, as well as with other analysts, academics and industry partners.

The Sectors Analysis team is a busy and lively team of analysts. The team is the analytical foundation behind the UK government’s Advanced Manufacturing policy, providing robust data, analysis and strategic insight to inform government decisions.

Our mission is to ensure that public policy is informed by the best evidence and evaluation and analytical tools available and that public investment decisions deliver the best value for money, fostering genuine economic growth and supporting the UK’s industrial competitiveness. We work closely with policy as an embedded analytical team acting as a critical friend and a source of challenge.

The team’s work includes:

• Work on the Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan that was published in 2025 and included over £4billion of investment into the sector.
• Work on high profile UK investment decisions in the manufacturing sector
• Value for money assessments of grant applications and sector support programmes and work to continually improve assessment techniques.
• Monitoring of the Advanced Manufacturing sector and of the impact of our programmes
• Multiple evaluations of large funds to support the sector.
• The team are at the forefront of thinking about what current economic shocks and geo-political factors mean for our major companies and sectors.

Job description

This grade 7 post will be in the Advanced Manufacturing and Evaluation team; a multi-disciplinary and supportive team of analysts. The team provides evidence and analysis (economic appraisal, strategic analysis, evaluation, modelling, statistics and briefing) on the Advanced Manufacturing sector. The post holder will work directly with the Advanced Manufacturing policy teams.

Key responsibilities include:

• Lead the development and management of the programme of high-quality monitoring and evaluation (m&e) to build the Advanced Manufacturing evidence base, including the procurement and delivery of evaluations of Advanced Manufacturing programmes.
• Lead the procurement and contract management of external process and impact evaluations.
• Provide quality assurance of M&E projects to ensure they deliver robust, impactful findings and achieve value for money.
• Lead the promotion and dissemination of evaluation findings outside the immediate team to ensure learning feeds into ongoing and new policy development, and products have maximum impact.
• Manage a team of social researcher and other analysts. Support their professional development and wellbeing.
• Provide analytical and social research support across the Advanced Manufacturing analysis team delivering insights and analysis on policy questions such as battery policy development, or the Advanced Manufacturing Sector plan.
• Build relationships with advanced manufacturing policy colleagues to understand analytical and social research needs.
• Develop and support a culture of research and monitoring and evaluation in directorate and wider department, including offering advice on monitoring and evaluation to other teams across the Group.
• We work flexibly across the team and wider department to respond to changing priorities. The role may involve supporting work in the wider team. There are also opportunities to vary the responsibilities to support your development.
• We will support you to develop professional expertise in monitoring and evaluation and sector knowledge.

Person specification

Essential criteria:

• Experience of applying quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches either from your work or academic experience to evaluation.
• Understanding of Magenta Book evaluation methods.
• Experience of procuring research and evaluation projects.
• Ability to presenting analytical outputs in a range of formats, tailored to different audiences.
• Ability to collaborate closely with fellow analysts, stakeholders and the policy team to deliver core objectives.

Candidates must be a current member of the Government Economics Service (GES), Government Operational Researcher Service (GORS),or Government Social Research (GSR), or be willing to undertake the badging process for GORS, GES, or GSR.