Economic Development Specialist - Senior Consultant or Principal Consultant

Office location flexible. London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Hemel Hempstead

Do you have a passionate interest in helping places to grow their economies? Do you enjoy applying robust economic analysis to help evidence how investments deliver impact for people and places? Do you enjoy working with teams across different sectors to plan and deliver high quality projects which clients can rely on and trust?

As part of our Economic Development & Evaluation Team, you will provide advice to a range of clients who are seeking to deliver transformational change across economic growth, regeneration and net zero agendas. You will have strong technical skills which can be applied to help clients develop strategies and business cases which drive real change. You will have experience of developing and applying techniques to assess economic impact, ideally in a local, regional or other place-based context.

As well as strong technical skills and the ability to interpret evidence to help shape robust policy and strategy, you will bring excellent communication and interpersonal qualities to enable you to lead reporting and presentation of advice and complex analysis to senior-level clients.

At Steer-ED, we provide specialist consultancy to support clients across the breadth of economic development, including innovation, growth and sector development, housing & regeneration, skills & inclusive growth and infrastructure planning. We also work collaboratively with Steer’s core transport consultancy team to provide holistic, insightful solutions for our clients.

We work with combined authorities, local government, subnational bodies, national government and government agencies to offer a spectrum of services across strategy & action planning; case-making; feasibility and impact assessment; and evaluation. We pride ourselves in understanding how local economies work and helping clients deliver the greatest benefit for the places they work for.

At Steer we recognise that your career will be unique to you as an individual, that is why we provide opportunities to expand your knowledge across new clients, new projects and even new markets if that interests you. Our support, whether that is as part of project teams, formal classroom or online training, or mentoring and coaching will enable you to be the best you can be and find day to day fulfilment as well as be supported on a longer-term career path.

You will work as part of a team providing solutions to national, regional and local clients. This position requires an enthusiastic, hard-working person, who wants to be part of our growing, dynamic team and in this role, tasks are likely to include:

• Provision of high-quality advice to clients including the preparation and delivery of reports and presentations.
• Managing project teams and budgets exercising effective financial and budgetary control.
• Leading work streams, ensuring that best practice techniques are applied consistently.
• Taking responsibility to lead economic analysis and economic impact modelling, interpret and review outputs and convey findings tailored as appropriate to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders from across different sectors through interviews and workshops, synthesising content into insightful findings.
• Contributing to the production and delivery of proposals related to our market area.
• Assisting in general business development initiatives.
• Taking part in training to develop both your technical and consultancy skills.

To be successful in the role, you will:

• Be comfortable working in creative multi-disciplinary teams and provide positive contributions.
• Demonstrate a strong track record in the field of economic development and delivering economic analysis.
• Take responsibility for key tasks and work streams, managing multiple deadlines in parallel.
• Demonstrate strong analytical skills as well as excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Proven project management/delivery experience in an economic development environment.

We believe in empowering our people and giving them the opportunities to shine. As an employee-owned company means that our…