Behavioural Scientist: Behaviour Change Specialist Ref. 1137

A career as a behavioural scientist in SIS offers a fantastic opportunity to apply specialist knowledge and skills in a unique area that has a growing evidence base, is highly stimulating, and can make a real difference to the security of our country. Two London-based roles – Behavioural Change Specialist and Credibility Assessment Specialist – are critical to growing our behavioural science capability.

Our behavioural science team is well integrated across the whole organisation and engaged in a wide variety of tasks. We place emphasis on each person within the team contributing to the development of others, and we support continued professional development through internal and external training. Team members make a critical contribution to ensuring that our work is grounded in the best available scientific evidence.

Depending on your skills and knowledge, your role could involve offering specialist consultancy, undertaking individual assessments, designing and facilitating training, conducting in-house research, advising policy makers, and working with researchers outside the organisation and our international partners. Innovative behavioural science theory to practise translation is at the heart of our team’s mission.

Although these roles are London based, short overseas visits may be required. We embrace flexible working, and applications for compressed hours, part-time working, working across more than one organisation, and job shares are given good consideration.  

To join the SIS cadre of behavioural scientists you’ll need a strong background and training in a behavioural science discipline and a deep understanding of human behaviour. You must have significant, relevant post-graduate experience and be educated to at least Master’s level in a behavioural science subject and, ideally, hold (or be near to completing) a doctorate. We are interested in people from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Your professional background could be health, clinical, forensic, occupational or academic psychology but it could also be another area of applied or academic behavioural science. You may currently be applying your expertise in a range of public or private sector settings. You do not need any experience of working in national security or intelligence areas as training will be given.

You will have a demonstrable, strong commitment to ethical, evidence-based practice and be at a stage in your career where you have had the opportunity to consolidate expert skills and are confident disseminating your specialist knowledge to others.

Being an engaging and thoughtful person who is confident offering challenge and new ideas to a bright and demanding set of peers is essential to joining our team. You will need to be willing and able to pick up pieces of work that have urgent time frames and deliver competent, clear and informative responses that have real impact.

You'll have experience of applying your specialist skills to complex research or practical problems. You’ll also have a proven ability to communicate effectively with people from a broad range of backgrounds, and be enthusiastic about working as part of a multi-disciplinary team.

We expect the post-holder to have a capacity for, and confidence in, guiding others to success.  You will be able to provide us with evidence of self-awareness and a thirst for developing yourself, facilitating the professional development of others, leading projects to successful outcomes and of applied strategic thinking in your approach to tasks.

The Behavioural Change Specialist and Credibility Assessment Specialist roles will require the post holders to work autonomously and to represent behavioural sciences at a senior level, interacting with a wide range of customers and stakeholders who may not have a behavioural science background.


Behavioural Scientist: Behaviour Change Specialist

Key responsibilities

• Synthesis of state-of-the-art knowledge on the applied psychology of group behaviour change and social influence via multiple channels of communication (including online and other digital modalities).
• Refinement of methodology, development of the evidence-base, training, consultancy and production of detailed behaviour change protocols and guidelines for behavioural science and non-behavioural scientist colleagues.
• Application of group behaviour change techniques in support of SIS security and mission objectives.
• Participation in research projects, service development and collaboration with internal and external partners.

Skills and Experience

This position would suit a behavioural scientist with a background in one or more of the following areas:

• Application of psychologically informed behaviour change techniques to issues of personnel security, employee productivity, team functioning and/or organisational efficiency and effectiveness.
• Group and/or population level behavioural change interventions based on sound scientific theory and techniques.
• Research or applied experience of the above in settings such as healthcare, domestic policy, foreign policy, counter-extremism, military information operations, and influence of behaviour via digital means of communication.
• Research into behaviour change at group or population levels.
• Public or private sector consultancy to non-behavioural scientists on the application of psychological theory and techniques.