We’re looking for an experienced evaluator who’s excited about bringing their evaluation expertise to the Office for Students (OfS), to help ensure that higher education provides a fulfilling experience for every student!
Our evaluation team is committed to our mission to support the OfS to celebrate and use evaluation to make a positive difference to students.
If this type of role as an evaluation champion and leader sounds like you, we’d love you to apply to come and work with us!
The role is a fixed term maternity cover position, and secondments are welcomed.
About us
The Office for Students (OfS) exists to ensure that English higher education offers the best experience and the best value - for students, for taxpayers, for the economy and for the public good. We are the independent regulator of higher education in England – we regulate higher education on behalf of all students. Our mission is to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers. We have high ambitions and offer great opportunities to get involved in bringing that vision to life.
About the role
The Evaluation Manager (maternity cover) will help the OfS work more effectively, by leading impactful evaluation activity and evaluative thinking across the organisation. In this role you will scope, run, and commission evaluations of OfS activity, with little supervision. You will provide expert advice on priority evidence projects, and work to champion a strong culture of evaluative thinking in the OfS. Our evaluations are typically impact and/or process evaluations, with a strong focus on theories of change and theory-based approaches, and use of mixed-methods.
We are developing our expertise in quasi-experimental approaches. You will do a mix of managing commissioned suppliers and conducting and supervising our own data collection and analysis.
Your role will include building relationships and engaging stakeholders and ensuring evaluation findings are translated into impact. You will facilitate discussions and learning exercises, deliver internal training, look for ways to share our work to maximise its impact, and look at how to build evaluation into the OfS’s ways of working. As well as managing projects, you will manage the work of junior team members and ensure high quality and timely outputs from your projects. You’ll be constantly developing your own knowledge of relevant research and evaluation and sharing this to build the knowledge of the team and wider colleagues.
We currently anticipate the maternity cover to be from February 2026 to March 2027.
About you
We are looking to recruit someone with substantial evaluation experience who is committed to using evidence to improve practices and further impact. As a manager in our team, we are also looking for someone who values working collaboratively and places high importance on learning, development and the sharing of knowledge and expertise.
Essential criteria for candidates include:
Experience of leading the scoping and delivery of practical evaluation activity in social policy fields.
Advanced knowledge of research design approaches and the use of data in evaluating social policy. In particular, knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methods, (quasi-) experimental and theory-based approaches, and knowledge of their limitations and strengths.
Excellent project and time management skills, with ability to work independently, prioritise and balance multiple workstreams and adapt to changing circumstances.
Clear and positive written and verbal communication, delivering high quality outputs.
Skilled in collaborating, managing relationships and supporting others, including managing project teams and the development of junior staff
A passion for evaluation, evidence, and learning and ability to demonstrate leadership and champion evaluation.
Working for us
We value diversity and the wealth of perspectives, experience and ideas that it brings to our work, and we strive to embed equality of opportunity in everything we do. We recruit based on fair and open competition and welcome applications from candidates regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Flexibility is important to the OfS, as we recognise that it can enable people to work more effectively. A set of organisation-wide principles shape our approach to flexible and hybrid working, which our teams then use as guidance on how they deliver their business goals. This would usually mean working from the office for two or three days in a typical week.
We want to attract the best people to work with us, and will consider requests for flexible working, including job share and part-time working.
Closing date for applications: 12:00 Monday 10th November 2025.
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