Trial Operations Coordinator

Octopus Energy’s Centre for Net Zero (CNZ) is recruiting a Trials Operations Coordinator to manage the operational logistics and coordination of field trials with Octopus Energy customers.
CNZ is developing a programme of field research aimed at understanding the potential for household level automation and behaviour change in the future energy system. Our trials will help policymakers, regulators, industry stakeholders, and even consumers understand how best to exploit intelligent and responsive demand from customers’ homes and appliances to deliver future energy markets that work well for people and the environment.
When we talk about ‘trials’ at CNZ, we mean randomised controlled trials (RCTs). We will work with Octopus Energy Group and other partners to randomise participants into groups – some receiving one intervention, other receiving a slightly different intervention, and others serving as a control group. We value RCTs highly because they deliver high ‘internal validity’, meaning they do a good job identifying how an intervention causes outcomes (rather than just being correlated with outcomes). But RCTs only do this when they are designed and implemented properly, and that’s where we need you.

What you'll do

• Ensure that trial designs are feasible and make sense for all partners
• Monitor how partners implement the trial to ensure fidelity to the original trial plans – and support them to do so
• Manage the time of CNZ team members to ensure we have the right time allocated to each stage of the trial and deliver it on time and to meet trial stakeholders’ expectations
• Help create, maintain, and update project plans and documentation, liaising with CNZ Trials team members and external partners
• Help create project milestones and budgets
• Keep track of how projects are progressing against those milestones and budgets
• Work with the CNZ Trials team to ensure necessary contracts and agreements are in place
• Manage relationships with external and internal project stakeholders
• Respond to data requests and coordinate, monitor and organise incoming data
• Help the team manage its own resource – e.g. building processes to allocate team members’ time to projects and track when team members are over or under-resourced)

You will work closely with CNZ’s Director of Behavioural Insights and other members of CNZ’s team to do all of this, but you will have a high degree of autonomy and responsibility to manage the operational logistics of our trials.

What you'll need

• Excellent project management skills, ideally in a context of delivering trials and/or other research. We’re looking for someone who can help us manage complex field trials involving a range of delivery partners.
• Some experience managing portfolios of multiple projects. We think that you’ll be more than a project manager in this role – you’ll help build the processes and structure that enable CNZ to deliver a programme of work comprising multiple field trials.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills. A big part of the job will be liaising with and persuading internal and external partners to do what is necessary to deliver the trial.
• Knowledge about energy and passion for creating a better future energy system

Why else you'll love it here

• We have a hybrid working environment with the expectation of 2-3 days in the office per week
• Octopus Energy is a unique culture. An organisation where people learn, decide, and build quicker. Where people work with autonomy, alongside a wide range of amazing co-owners, on projects that break new ground. We want your hard work to be rewarded with perks you actually care about! We won best company to work for in 2022, on Glassdoor we were voted 50 best places to work in 2022 and our Group CEO, Greg has recorded a podcast about our culture and how we empower our people. We’ve also been placed in the top 10 companies for senior leadership
• Visit our UK perks hub - Octopus Employee Benefits

The salary is dependent on experience


If you are interested in the Centre for Net Zero please send us over your details along with a bit about you and why you're interested.

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