Lead Investment Analyst
- Civil Service
- Full Time
- Birmingham
- 59,877 - 69,457
Job Description
Job summary
Available Locations
Liverpool, Newport, Norwich, Glasgow or Birmingham.
The following locations listed below are restricted to contracted GCA staff already based in one of these offices:
London, Bristol, Manchester or York.
External applicants are not eligible for these sites. If you select one of these locations as an external applicant your application will unfortunately be withdrawn.
Watch our Webinar on the above link and gain valuable insight into GCA and our recruitment processes.
Every year, the Government Commercial Agency invests in strategic projects and change initiatives, but how do we ensure every pound delivers genuine, long-term value for the public? As the Lead Investment Analyst, you will step directly into this gap, transforming complex economic analysis and theory into robust business cases that withstand commercial and political pressures.
In this role, your value to the nation is direct and measurable. Through rigorous application of the Green, AQuA, and Magenta books, you wont just be reviewing numbers; you will be safeguarding public funds and ensuring that high-level strategic decisions are backed by undeniable, high-quality evidence.
Job description
Job Summary
As a newly established function within the Government Commercial Agency (GCA), the Research, Evaluation and Analysis team is responsible for supporting GCA and our wider government customers in delivering against government strategy including the five missions and policy impact on customers and supplier behaviour.
The Lead Investment Analyst is a critical role focused on professionalising the use of economic and social research standards across the organisation. Working closely with the Transformation Directorate and Finance, Planning and Performance Directorate (FPP) you will lead on embedding Green Book and Magenta Book principles within GCA, ensuring our commercial decisions and project and programme initiatives are underpinned by robust, evidence-based business cases.
Person specification
Key Accountabilities:
You will act as the lead economic advisor for the Investment Analysis team, defining the analytical strategy and ensuring all outputs meet rigorous professional standards.
Provide direct management and talent development for a multidisciplinary team, including Government Economic Service (GES) and Government Social Research (GSR) Fast Streamers.
Serve as the GCA custodian on the Green and Magenta books, reviewing and supporting the development of Economic Business Cases and evaluation strategies.
Act as the professional client during economic business case design and appraisal, and evaluation design (Process, Impact & Value for Money), for complex projects and programmes. Providing thought leadership and assuring adherence to the Green and Magenta Book standards.
Co-design proportionate evaluation frameworks (Process, Impact & Value for Money), providing analysis and metrics, to ensure GCA delivers value for the nation.
Act as the professional lead for economic business case design and appraisal, supervising the application of techniques such as monetisation, discounting and sensitivity analysis to produce high-quality Cost-Benefit Analysis.
Proactively partner with Senior Responsible Owners, Transformation, FPP, and other internal directorates to identify information needs and translate unfocussed requests into effective designs.
Evaluate and integrate information from diverse sources to present clear, logical conclusions to senior non-specialists, assisting them in discerning trends and drawing actionable implications.
Work with the Head of Research, Evaluation & Analysis to develop and own the Investment Analysis Team strategy. Ensuring the strategies are aligned to the broader government missions and organisational objectives.
Lead quality-assurance processes, for business case design and appraisal, in line with the AQuA Book, ensuring modelling stands up to external scrutiny.
Act as one of the final technical signatories for economic inputs into business cases, ensuring they are 'Treasury-ready' and can withstand National Audit Office (NAO) level scrutiny.
Essential Criteria (to be assessed at application stage):
Must be a badged member of the Government Economic Service (or eligible to pass the board) with an established track record delivering economic evidence to Green, AQuA, and Magenta Book standards
Deep knowledge of micro/macroeconomic theory, including expert-level Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), applied industrial organisation, market framework analysis and complex Theory of Change evaluation models
Skilled in (or able to lead teams using) statistical programming (R, Python, SQL, SPSS, Stata) and data visualisation tools (PowerBI, Tableau, R-Shiny) to translate complex data into clear dashboards
Proven ability to lead, coach and maintain a cohesive culture across a geographically dispersed, multidisciplinary analytical team while supporting career development and the wider GES network
Ability to synthesise complex analysis, anticipate future evidence needs, and effectively influence senior stakeholders to ensure analytical evidence carries weight against commercial or political pressures.
