Senior Data Scientist at UK Health Security Agency in Core HQ's Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London –Canary Wharf

Job summary

Data science is a broad and fast-moving field spanning maths, statistics, software engineering and communications. Data scientists will often work as part of a multidisciplinary team, using data and analytics to inform and achieveorganisational goals.

In this role, you will:

• be inquisitive
• explore and visualise data
• make recommendations to address complex problems and to inform strategic and operational decision making
• use data ethically and appropriately
• be innovative and adaptable
• explore existing and new data using a range of statistical tools and techniques, such as machine learning and predictive analytics
• find patterns in data and transform them into organisational insight

The Health Protection Information, Systems and Data team exists to enable high-quality, reliable, and accessible epidemiology and health protection data to support operational decision-making and analytical insight across the agency, with a focus on regional health protection and field services. This is achieved through managing and curating core health protection data assets, developing and maintaining operational data processes and services, and leading cross-agency transformation programmes. The team plays a critical role in bridging operational delivery, data engineering, and analytical capability within Health Protection, ensuring that data and systems effectively support frontline services and organisational priorities.

Job description

A senior data scientist will work independently and have a good understanding of a range of topics, including data science techniques, delivery methods and stages (such as minimal viable products), tools and technologies.

At this role level, you will:

• develop complex solutions using a range of data science techniques, whilst

understanding any ethical considerations

• understand the role and benefits of data science within the organisation
• support capability building within the organisation
• collaborate with others to develop data science solutions and outputs supporting the organisation
• prepare and manipulate data, and perform complex analytics
• present and communicate effectively

In this team, you will:

• build reproducible analytical pipelines / applications that support epidemiological analysis and operational delivery of health protection activities
• deploy and monitor applications and pipelines using OpenShift and Airflow
• write documentation which supports collaborative working
• engage with stakeholders across the agency to develop project requirements and ensure products meet user needs

About the broader GDD profession

The GDD Profession consists of people who work in a digital, data or technology specialist role. They design, build and run government digital services. They are responsible for the way we find, access and use data and for the technology infrastructure which support those services. There are currently about 18,000 people working in the Profession. The Profession consists of people working within specialist communities of practice. There is a full list of roles on GOV.UK:

Home - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Applied maths, statistics and scientific practices.

You can apply analytical methods including exploratory data analysis,

visualisation and statistical testing to reach accurate conclusions. You can use analytical approaches to interpret data confidently. You can

summarise and describe data to support decision making.

Data engineering and manipulation

You can select and use the most appropriate tools and techniques to manipulate and transform the data for data science products. You can collaborate with data engineers.

Data science innovation

You can apply data science innovation in your approach to new

questions, opportunities, data and techniques by using an inquisitive mind. You can improve methods and maximise insights. You can apply your data science innovation to produce creative solutions to data science problems.

• Delivering Business Impact
• You can understand processes, data and strategic priorities. You can
• apply data science techniques to produce and present data science

products. You can design solutions that meet user needs, allowing for design and ethics standards. You can work towards the successful delivery of products and establish maintenance requirements.

Developing data science capability

You can work with data scientists and developers to share skills. You can ensure that your team can access the right technologies to create products. You can develop your data science skills. You can routinely engage with and update your continuous professional development (CPD).

Ethics and privacy (data science)

You can understand and comply with frameworks, standards and laws, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the Equalities Act. You can work with legal, policy and public colleagues, government departments and ministers to clearly communicate ethical issues and ideas. You can store and treat data appropriately.

Programming and build (data science)

You can use programming tools to undertake analysis and create scalable data products. You can identify and reuse common approaches and code. You can document and test code to ensure its quality. You can understand the organisation's tech stack and get code into production by working with developers and architects.

• Understanding product delivery
• You can use different product delivery methods (such as Agile) and
• phases to make decisions. You can work collaboratively with other

professionals. You can use knowledge of product management to deploy data science products into the organisation. You can show data science is used effectively to support products and services.

For a more detailed and comprehensive description please see:

Data scientist - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

Public health specific features of this role include:

• Work closely with epidemiologists to develop scalable, innovative approaches to extract, manage, and analyse epidemiological surveillance and outbreak data, and other datasets relevant to public health and developing an understanding of the strengths, limitations and caveats of various public health and epidemiological data assets to inform your analysis and interpretation.

Technical Expectations

• Act as a technical subject matter expert on data science applications across UKHSA where you are recognised as having specialist knowledge in that area.
• Support the implementation of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP), promoting reproducible analysis (i.e. analysis with a clear audit trail that explains how and why it was carried out) and the

use of the software methods used to make analysis reproducible.

• Act as an ambassador on data science within UKHSA and across the health sector through presentations at various conferences, speaking engagements, and contribute to ministerial submissions, briefings and whitepapers as required.

Professional Development

• You should pursue a programme of continuous professional development in accordance with any relevant professional registration or statutory requirements, while maintaining appropriate awareness of service provider requirements.
• Identify, discuss and action own professional performance and training / development needs with your line manager through appraisal / individual development plan. Attending internal / external training events.
• To participate in all mandatory training as required, i.e. fire safety, information governance and all other mandatory training.

Other Duties

• The above is only an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of the role. You will carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required.
• The job description and person specification may be reviewed on an ongoing basis in accordance with the changing needs of the organisation.

Person specification

Essential criteria:

• Strong proficiency applying analytical and statistical techniques across real-world codebases; practitioner level in SQL and in Python and/or R with fluency in Git-based workflows (branching, code review) testing and reproducible environments.
• Experience in wrangling, cleaning and preprocessing data in readiness for analysis, including working efficiently with large/complex datasets.
• Applied understanding of machine learning approaches (regression, classification, clustering), selecting suitable validation strategies (train/validation/test, cross-validation) and evaluating

performance using appropriate metrics (e.g. precision, recall, F1, ROC-AUC) while addressing issues such as imbalance and leakage.

• Working independently and in collaboration with others to deliver multiple concurrent projects, managing scope, risks and dependencies and contributing to team practices (e.g. agile, code

reviews, documentation).

• Highly proficient organisational skills with the ability to prioritise, schedule and re-plan to meet tight deadlines. Produces clear technical and non-technical documentation and keep accurate

project records.

• Ability to construct and effectively communicate persuasive data stories using fit-for-purpose visualisation with clear narrative, communicating uncertainty, assumptions, caveats and

limitations of the data.

• Solid understanding of quality assurance, data validity, reliability and confidentiality issues and statutory information governance requirements.
• Well-developed problem-solving skills and a flexible approach to developing solutions including stages between user requirements to product delivery.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to influence, communicate, present and capture requirements from technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Make sound, evidence-based decisions within remit; escalates appropriately with well-reasoned options and recommendations.
• A first- or second-class honours degree in a numerate discipline, computer science or IT equivalent which demonstrates core statistical skills.
• OR have worked in a statistical/data science field and are able to demonstrate continuous professional development in statistics/data science at the same level as a foundation degree/HND (Level 5)

Desirable criteria:

• Understanding of techniques and applications of public health and healthcare intelligence.
• Experience in using a range of data sources, including clinical, epidemiological, environmental and socio-economic data to support efficient management of public health incident response and for research purposes including engaging with data owners and querying and linking data.
• Experience of producing analytical products (e.g., software packages, reports, dynamic visualisations/dashboards) for decision making.
• Experience of automating report production, deploying dashboards and/or APIs to a server.
• Knowledge of testing code and code refactoring to reduce computational timing/required resources.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes concepts and/or similar container orchestration platforms
• Experience of both R and Python
• Familiarity with AI concepts and tools.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,983, UK Health Security Agency contributes

£12,162 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality of opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforc