Research Portfolio Officer

Location(UK): Office Hybrid* - London or Chesterfield
Hours: Full-time, 35 hours per week
Salary: £31,918 per annum (London), £29,016 per annum (rest of UK)
Contract type: 1 Year Fixed-term until 1 October 2025
Travel: Some travel may be required

Join us and use your skills, knowledge, passion and energy to help us achieve a future free from arthritis.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone with research experience to work within a team of experts in research strategy development, research delivery and research policy, to communicate the outputs of our research funding to diverse stakeholders across the charity.    

About the role

You will work within a dynamic and friendly team to help support our Research Programme Managers to develop and manage the Versus Arthritis research portfolio. This will include collating and monitoring data from diverse sources to help provide oversight of our funded research. You will also work closely with other colleagues to translate our research outputs into a format that is clear and impactful to help teams across the charity achieve their strategic objectives. 

 You will work across a diverse range of projects and will liaise with a wide range of teams from across the charity to help us to tell the story of our research investment.    

 About you

If your knowledge, skills and experience include the following then we’d love to hear from you:

• A degree or equivalent level of experience in scientific, medical or research related domains via the charity, commercial, health, higher education or publishing sectors.  
• Comfortable in working with research related metrics and data, with some experience of understanding and preparing medical/scientific information for non-specialist audiences. 
• High quality verbal and written communication skills including being able to communicate complex information and requirements to a wide range of audiences and stakeholders. 
• A flexible and collaborative approach; able to work closely and adaptively with immediate team and collaboratively across the organisation. 
• Good information technology skills, including effective database/PubMed/internet search techniques and significant experience of using Microsoft Office packages. 
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects, with the ability to prioritise and meet deadlines independently, including rapid turnaround requests. 

*As a hybrid worker the expectation is that you will spend around 40% of your working time in our office spaces or working in community settings. As an inclusive employer we will consider home-based working for anyone where office-based hybrid working would be a barrier to being able to work for us, for example for someone living with a long-term health condition or disability.

Benefits Your excellent benefits include:

• Flexible hours, environments and working practices to promote a healthy work/life balance.
• Health and wellbeing support – including the Employee Assistance Programme (free confidential 24/7 support with mental health, legal and financial queries).
• Simplyhealth cash plan.
• Supportive and inclusive culture, with a wide range of employee networks and support groups available to join.
• Learning and personal development opportunities.
• Competitive annual leave, with the option to buy/sell up to five days per year.
• Generous pension plan, with employer contribution of up to 10%.
• Life Assurance plan (4 x salary).

Application deadline and shortlisting 

• We advise candidates to apply early as we reserve the right to close applications ahead of this date.  
• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. 

We do not wish to receive contact from agencies or media sales. 

Interview

First Interviews expected on Monday 14 October 2024 on Microsoft Teams.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we guarantee you will be offered an interview if you disclose a disability and demonstrate sufficient evidence within your application that you meet the essential criteria for this role. We will also make any reasonable adjustments you may require for your interview.

About us

We have made a commitment in our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy to increase the diversity of our charity and we welcome candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We want our employees, volunteers and trustees to represent the broad diversity of the communities of which we are a part.

There are over 10 million people living with arthritis. That’s one in six, with over half of those living in pain every single day. The impact is huge as the condition slowly intrudes on everyday life – affecting the ability to work, care for a family, to move free from pain and to live independently. Yet arthritis is often dismissed as an inevitable part of ageing or shrugged off as ‘just a bit of arthritis’. We don’t think that this is OK. Versus Arthritis is here to change that.

Versus Arthritis is committed to keeping children, young people and vulnerable adults safe from harm. During the recruitment process we will undertake safer recruitment practices and relevant checks to ensure applicants are suitable to work with children, young people and vulnerable adults.