Head of Research & Editorial

Firstwork; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Firstwork is seeking a senior writer-research lead to shape the research agenda, publish flagship reports and uphold editorial standards across all outputs. You will collaborate with data and engineering teams to craft compelling data stories and lead policy engagement on European labour regulations.

Collaborating with academics and industry bodies, you will also oversee the CEO's long-form material and build a small Content Producer team to translate research into multimedia formats.

Qualifications

• Seven or more years in research, journalism, think tanks, policy, or a strategy function producing original published work.
• A portfolio with at least one piece that changed how someone thought about a subject.
• Quantitative comfort. You can interrogate a dataset and recognise when it won't support the claim you want to make.
• Real interest in labour markets, migration, regulation or the economics of work.
• The spine to hold a line on accuracy when there is commercial pressure not to
• Editorial judgement. You can commission, edit and improve other people's work.
• Use of AI across the research process, on the understanding that it raises the verification bar rather than lowering it

Responsibilities

• Set the research agenda for Firstwork's outputs.
• Write and publish flagship reports and white papers.
• Own editorial standards across everything Firstwork publishes.
• Build data stories with our data and engineering teams.
• Lead policy engagement on European labour and employment regulation.
• Produce the CEO's long-form writing and speaking material.
• Build partnerships with academics, institutions and industry bodies.
• Manage a Content Producer who turns the research into video, graphics, podcasts and report design

Skills

Research leadership

Editorial judgement

Quantitative analysis

Data storytelling

AI in research

Policy knowledge

Job description

About Firstwork

Labour markets are broken. Millions of people are ready to work and can't start. Screening, right-to-work checks, contracts, onboarding and scheduling still run across disconnected systems, with hundreds of manual decisions in between. Firstwork builds AI agents that run frontline workforce operations end to end. We activate hundreds of thousands of workers a month globally for some of the world's largest employers and staffing firms, working forward-deployed inside the customer's operation. Backed by Y Combinator and Gradient (Google’s AI fund), with offices in New York, and London and Dubai opening this year.

Why this role

Frontline labour markets are badly measured. Governments publish unemployment and vacancy statistics. Nobody publishes a credible number for how long it takes to get a qualified person from application to first shift, what that delay costs, or how much of it is regulatory rather than operational.

We see activation at scale, across sectors and jurisdictions, so we can measure what nobody else can. Publishing it sets the terms of the debate, gives policymakers something real to work with, and gives our commercial teams something better than a pitch deck. The standard we are aiming at is work a member of government or tier one investor forwards along to their colleagues.

What you'll do

• Set the research agenda

• Write and publish flagship reports and white papers

• Own editorial standards across everything Firstwork publishes

• Build data stories with our data and engineering teams

• Lead policy engagement on European labour and employment regulation

• Produce the CEO's long-form writing and speaking material

• Build partnerships with academics, institutions and industry bodies

• Manage a Content Producer who turns the research into video, graphics, podcasts and report design

What we're looking for

• Seven or more years in research, journalism, think tanks, policy, or a strategy function producing original published work

• A portfolio with at least one piece that changed how someone thought about a subject

• Quantitative comfort. You can interrogate a dataset and recognise when it won't support the claim you want to make

• Real interest in labour markets, migration, regulation or the economics of work

• The spine to hold a line on accuracy when there is commercial pressure not to

• Editorial judgement. You can commission, edit and improve other people's work

• Use of AI across the research process, on the understanding that it raises the verification bar rather than lowering it

This is a rare opportunity for a serious writer and content creator to help shape the future of work at a high-growth, well-funded company with strong opinions about what the world should look like in the age of AI. If the idea of running a research desk on a dataset nobody else has access to excites you, send us your best work.

Firstwork is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or any other protected status.

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