Download a copy of the Job Description here.
Contract type: Fixed term until 18th December 2026
Hours: Part time – 2.5 days (18.75 hours) per week. Ideally this time will be worked flexibly across the week to take certain fixed meetings into account and allow the programme manager to keep an eye on the project throughout the week, but we’re open to discussing how this could work for you in practice.
Salary: £48,000 pro rata
Location: Whitehall, Greater London (Hybrid)
Line manager: Director of Participatory Programmes
Application deadline: Monday 10th November, 9am (GMT)
Interviews: Wednesday 19th November (in-person at our offices in Whitehall)
About Demos
Demos is a highly respected cross-party think tank with a unique approach to making policy to solve our long term problems. Building on nearly 30 years of creativity, ideas and impact, Demos’s mission is to upgrade democracy: rebuilding the relationship between citizen and state. Our work explores the elements of a ‘New Deal’, in which power is devolved, citizens participate in policy making, and together as a nation we find answers to the challenges of our century.
Our work focuses on:
- Public Service Reform, to liberate citizens and public servants and prevent problems
- A Citizen Economy, where people, businesses, charities and government work together to achieve growth that works for people as well as profits
- More Trustworthy Technology, in which technological progress aligns with the needs and values of citizens
- A more Collaborative Democracy, in which politicians, experts and citizens partner to tackle the challenges facing our country
About Waves
Demos is leading the largest trial of digital democracy in Britain.
Waves is a €1 million project trialling new technology in local democracy, launched to bring people together to tackle contentious local issues and strengthen trust in local government. Thousands of local people will have the opportunity to shape local government policy on an issue affecting their area.
New AI-powered technology is intended to make it easier, cheaper and quicker for participants to have their say, identify areas of consensus, discuss difficult issues and work through trade-offs together.
Waves is being delivered by a coalition of partners, including New Local, a think tank and network of forward-thinking councils; technology innovators, CASM Technology; and digital democracy platforms, PSi and Remesh.
We are working in partnership with two trailblazing councils who are both embracing the opportunity to put the public at the heart of their policy making. The trial will begin in the London Borough of Camden to co-develop an approach to adult social care. The trial will then move on to South Staffordshire District Council as they develop an inclusive engagement process to prepare for their next local plan. The partners will also support a further 25 councils to observe and learn from the process so that they too can use the tools in the future.
Trust in politics and politicians is in crisis. Only 24% of people trust politicians to make decisions in the best interests of the country. Polarisation is increasing. At the same time, people want to be involved in the public policy decisions that affect them.
As a result, local councils struggle to meaningfully engage local citizens in the decisions that affect their lives, while communities are increasingly self-organising on Facebook and Whatsapp groups. This leaves a democratic gulf between local councils and their communities that this project is seeking to bridge. Demos’s work on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods identified this ‘democratic chasm’.
Participatory democracy is one answer to this challenge – finding ways for people impacted by an issue to work with local and national politicians and experts to understand the problem and develop solutions together. Methods like Citizens’ Assemblies are powerful but can be prohibitively expensive for governments to use which means that doing democracy differently isn’t mainstreamed. Civic tech platforms offer a way for more people to get involved but don’t bring people together to find consensus.
Waves will be a new digital deliberation process and tool that uses AI to enable participation both at scale and in depth. Waves will integrate existing digital tools – Remesh and PSI – with new open-source technology, developed by CASM Technology, to simplify and scale end-to-end deliberation for local governments. By simplifying the process and bringing down the costs, more people can play an active role in the policy decisions that affect their lives, local governments can hear directly from their residents and develop policies that work better for people.
We want to make doing democracy differently business as usual.
Waves was funded by Google.org in 2024. You can find out more about the programme here.
About the role
We are looking for an experienced programme manager who can steer Waves from now until it completes in December 2026.
You would be joining the programme at a pivotal time as we move from the ‘set-up’ and ‘co-design’ phases of the first 6-months, to the start of the first of our two trials running sequentially over the next 11 months, before moving to a final ‘impact phase’ of dissemination of our toolkits, technology and learning in the final 6 months.
Programme management of Waves means ensuring that the whole project stays on track – on time and on budget – throughout its delivery. There are 5 partners, a number of suppliers and many moving parts, so it is critical that we find someone who can work across the whole programme, anticipating who needs to do what and by when, and ensuring that the programme is delivered successfully so we can draw learnings from it to share widely across the local government, democracy, and tech sectors.
It is worth bearing in mind that Waves is a ‘test and learn’ trial of a new deliberative democratic process using existing and new technology. Therefore, the team is committed to learning from the project and being comfortable with the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what the outcomes are going to be.
What you’ll be doing
Stakeholder management
- Guiding, supporting and motivating the Waves team, both within Demos, and partners, ensuring that we’re all working together effectively and collaboratively.
- Regular contact with partners individually and collectively (Camden Council, South Staffordshire District Council, New Local, CASM Tech, Psi, Remesh) to ensure that their work is on track, supporting and trouble-shooting as necessary, as well as internal Demos programme meetings.
- Set the agenda for meetings, to ensure everyone is clear on their actions, anticipate what decisions will need to be made and who needs to take them, follow up on actions and anticipate next steps.
- Being a lynchpin within the Demos team – ensuring clear roles and responsibilities, communication and delegation between the two Programme co-leads, lead deliberation manager and researcher.
Monitoring and evaluation
- Owning the monitoring and evaluation of our impact as a programme – using the evaluation framework developed at the outset of the programme.
- Managing partnerships with our university and polling company partner to deliver the monitoring and evaluation impact of this programme with participants at the end of each trial in budget and time.
- Working with partners to ensure the design, analysis and reporting of our quantitative impact assessment reflects the needs of our funder and programme impact reporting and is achieved to a high quality.
- Completing the annual impact reporting requirements for the funder in Dec-Jan 2025-2026 and Dec-Jan 2026-2027.
Programme Impact
- Producing, with Waves partners, the final outputs from the Waves programme, including: Waves ‘toolkit’ which sets out how councils can deliver Waves themselves.
- Owning and producing, in partnership with New Local (learning partner) the final programme evaluation/impact report which reflects learnings of the programme as well as our impact against our goals.
- Working with the programme team and Demos’s Director of Policy and Impact and Head of Communications to ensure that the programme achieves coverage and attention during its delivery – disseminating learning to key identified audiences.
- Ensure that the people who have signed up to the Waves mailing list receive regular updates on progress and learning.
- Work with the Demos team to create a ‘pitch deck’ to promote Waves to other local authorities (and other potential users) by early 2026.
Budget management
- Owning the budget of the Waves programme, ensuring that the programme stays on budget, keeping a close eye on time and external expenditure, including payments and cash flow (in partnership with Demos’ CFO and in communication with programme partners.)
Risk management
- Conducting programme-wide meetings with key partners, the CEO and CFO to assess and report on the risk of the programme – as identified via the risk management framework developed at outset of the programme.
- Monitoring risks and maintaining risk mitigation strategies.
AI Ethics Board
- Setting agendas, managing the input and follow-up on the actions of the AI Ethics Board (which includes 3 AI Ethics expert advisors, 2 senior representatives from Council and representatives of programme team) with support from the Programme Co-Lead.
- Driving the development and application of the AI Ethics Principles and Framework to ensure the trials are being delivered in line with these
- Ensuring that communications surrounding the AI Ethics Principles and Framework are transparent and available for those following the Waves programme and that necessary agreements, comms and consent forms with trial participants reflect the principles and framework.
What you’ll need to be successful
The types of knowledge, skills and experience we are looking for are below. We welcome a range of applications which include at least some of these attributes.
- Demonstrable experience managing an equivalent programme in terms of complexity, scale and partners with a solid understanding of project management methods.
- Understanding and commitment to the mission of the programme – motivated to tackle issues of low trust in democracy among UK citizens with digital democratic platforms and deliberative processes a crucial part of the solution.
- Team management, interpersonal and communication skills – ability to lead and motivate a team with diverse skills and priorities to deliver a programme of great complexity and uncertainty, including fostering collaboration and trust, managing conflicts, maintaining transparency and empowering different partners to perform effectively.
- Strong strategic thinking and decision-making skills – the ability to align activities with overall programme objectives, making informed decisions based on programme lead and partner inputs and, where possible, data and analysis, and drive the programme towards successful outcomes.
- Ability to identify potential risks, develop mitigation strategies and manage issues that may arise during the programme lifecycle – ideally in an innovation context, one working with diverse partners with different ways of working or when using technology/ conducting trials with the public.
- An interest in, and comfort working with, innovative technologies that utilise AI and collect data, as well as an understanding of the risks and sensitivities surrounding the use of AI, among the public and within the public sector.
- Experience of owning and managing a large-scale budget, conducting calculations when there are changes from the plan, and maintaining clear and robust tracking of expenditure to ensure financial accountability.
- Demonstrable ability to adapt to changing circumstances, solve problems creatively and maintain momentum and energy during challenging situations.
- Highly collaborative, with a commitment to teamwork and inclusivity.
Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Justice (DIEJ) at Demos
At Demos, we recognise, celebrate and promote the positive contributions that are made by diverse groups. We exist to proactively tackle social and economic exclusion, and engaging with and promoting the voices of people whose voices may not otherwise be heard is core to our work. We believe that this should be reflected in our team and we strongly encourage applications from people from minority ethnic communities, people with disabilities, or others with lived experience of disadvantage.
We expect all members of our team to commit to Demos’ cross-party approach. This means we engage with all parties in the democratic system where it will further our charitable aims. Our mission to strengthen democracy and overcome division depends on building dialogue across political divides while upholding our values of diversity, inclusion, equity and justice.
We expect all members of our team to recognise and value differences and the unique contributions that people make to the way we conduct our work and develop our insights, and encourage people to bring their diverse perspectives and backgrounds into their work on a day-to-day basis. We would be happy to discuss flexible working requirements with any candidates. Read our full DIEJ policy here.
What we offer
- Generous leave entitlement: 27 days + Bank holidays + 3 additional days off between Christmas and New Year (pro rata)
- Enhanced pension contribution: 6%
- Enhanced sick pay
- A forward-thinking, supportive and collaborative team
At Demos we centre staff wellbeing as a key priority; we will make every effort to ensure staff feel happy, healthy and valued as part of our integral team.
Application and selection process
Applications close Monday 10th November, 9am GMT (UK)
To apply, please provide the following through our application form:
- an anonymised CV (with any references to your name and personal details removed)
- answers to four screening questions (up to 250 words each)
- a completed copy of our diversity monitoring form (optional)
All applications will be evaluated and graded anonymously to minimise bias in our screening process.
Questions?
If you have any further questions or aren’t sure if the role is right for you, please feel free to reach out to us by emailing [email protected] and we would be happy to answer any queries.
We look forward to hearing from you!