Research Lead, AI and the Future of Work

About INCO

INCO is a global social enterprise building a more inclusive and sustainable economy. We have helped more than 500,000 people build skills and connect with jobs, supported over 8,000 small business founders, and run programmes in 140 countries. AI skilling is now at the centre of that work, with a focus on people who face barriers to employment.

Running skilling programmes at this scale showed us a gap. Training providers, employers and governments are making big decisions about AI and work with very little reliable, up-to-date evidence. So we have developed a research and data practice on how AI is changing jobs, skills and small businesses, in Europe and around the world, to inform both our own programmes and public policy.

Our latest report, Europe at Work in the Age of Generative AI, analysed 31.2 million unique job postings from across Europe between 2022 and 2025, alongside hundreds of interviews with jobseekers, employers and academics. It looked at which occupations AI is reshaping, how employers' demands are shifting, and what it takes to make sure under-represented groups are not left behind.

The programme

INCO is launching a three-year programme (2026 to 2029) to track AI's real-world impact on jobs, skills and productivity across all 27 EU member states, and to help governments act on what we find. It runs on three connected workstreams:

1. A dynamic labour demand tracker built from job postings data, tagged to EU occupation and skills classifications and a new AI-skills taxonomy, refreshed on a regular schedule.

2. Fieldwork with employers, training providers, unions and public employment services, including a repeated employer survey, sector expert panels and productivity studies with partner employers.

3. Policy analysis of how governments turn labour market signals into decisions, what has worked, and practical tools such as an open scenario-planning toolkit.

The research is delivered with a consortium of 8 to 15 national research partners, with deep coverage of Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland and regional clusters covering the rest of the EU. INCO sets the framework, partners collect the data, and INCO consolidates and publishes.

The role

You will own the research side of the programme from start to finish. That means setting the framework every partner works to, keeping a consortium of experienced researchers aligned and on schedule, and turning 27 national pictures into one credible European one.

Most data collection sits with partners. Your job is to make their work comparable, rigorous and publishable, and to be a peer that senior labour economists and sociologists across Europe take seriously. You will work closely with the Head of Policy Engagement, who takes the findings to policymakers.

Key missions on the programme

• Set the research framework. Finalise the research questions, indicators, sampling approach, interview guides and analysis framework, and bring them together in one research handbook all partners work from. Own the AI-skills taxonomy and its twice-yearly review.

• Build and lead the consortium. Help identify and select research partners, shape their scopes of work and budgets, onboard them, and run the working groups and review cycles that keep national work consistent. You will lead partners you do not line-manage, so influence matters as much as authority.

• Oversee data and methods. Act as the quality owner for the job postings pipeline (Cedefop and Eurostat sources, public employment service feeds, commercial data), tagging accuracy and weighting against official statistics. Steer the occupation-level projections, the employer survey panel and the difference-in-differences productivity studies, working with data engineers and partners who run them day to day.

• Consolidate and publish. Pool national inputs into comparable EU27 series and lead the cross-country analysis. Own the quarterly data refreshes, five semi-annual reports, policy briefs, the annual flagship report and the final EU27 report in 2029.

• Ground the scenario toolkit in evidence. Make sure the modelling assumptions behind the open scenario-planning toolkit come from the data and fieldwork, and stand up to scrutiny from the labour agencies and ministries meant to use it.

• Protect research integrity. Keep the work independent and transparent: published methods, coverage and accuracy by country, null results reported alongside positive ones, and sound ethics and data protection (GDPR) practice across partners.

• Feed the policy work. Give the policy team clear findings, rapid analysis when a labour market story breaks, and a strong voice in the room at convenings with policymakers, social partners and researchers.

• Report on progress. Track research deliverables and KPIs, contribute to funder reporting, and manage the research consolidation budget.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Substantial senior experience in applied research on labour markets, skills, the economics of technology or a closely related field.

• Publications or reports that are credible to both academic and policy audiences.

• Strong command of quantitative methods: labour market and vacancy data, survey design, and causal inference such as difference-in-differences and event studies. You need to set standards and challenge partners' choices, even if you are not running every model yourself.

• Comfort with qualitative research, and a sense of how to combine it with quantitative evidence.

• Good knowledge of European labour market institutions and data (Eurostat, Cedefop, Eurofound, ESCO, ISCO, Labour Force Survey).

• Excellent written English, and the ability to explain complex findings plainly to non-specialists.

Nice to have

• A PhD in economics, sociology, public policy or a related field. Not required if your experience speaks for itself.

• Hands-on experience with online job advertisement data (for example Lightcast, TalentNeuron or Cedefop's Skills-OVATE).

• Research experience on AI, automation or the digital economy, and familiarity with the AI Act.

• An existing network in European labour research, for example at universities, IZA, Bruegel, the JRC, Cedefop, Eurofound or the OECD.

• Polish or another EU language, and knowledge of Central and Eastern European labour markets.

What success looks like

• First 6 months: research handbook and AI-skills taxonomy agreed, consortium partners contracted and onboarded, first data release from the tracker.

• End of year 1: first semi-annual report published and cited by policymakers, with a consortium that works as one team.

• End of year 3: a flagship EU27 report, a dataset and toolkit others reuse, and a research function INCO can build on.

What we offer

• A senior role with real ownership of a high-profile European research programme, from design to publication.

• Work that feeds directly into policy and into skilling programmes reaching hundreds of thousands of people.

• Hybrid working and regular travel across Europe.

• A mission-driven international team across INCO's activities.