We are recruiting for a Data Scientist - Innovation Growth Lab

About IGL and the Data and Technology Unit

The Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) is a global initiative based at Nesta that aims to make innovation and growth policy more impactful through new ideas, increased experimentation and better evidence. We work at the intersection of research and policy, working in partnership with governments, practitioners, foundations and researchers to test different approaches to accelerate innovation, entrepreneurship and growth. 

IGL’s Data and Technology Unit uses data science, AI and other data-driven technologies to better understand the problems and opportunities for science, innovation and business policy, to inform policy interventions, to develop solutions, and to evaluate their impacts. Through their work, the post holder will use such methods and their own expertise to deliver impact and continue to build IGL’s portfolio of work in this area.

In addition to the delivery of applied research and innovation projects, the Unit supports organisations in science, innovation and business policy to use data effectively and build new capabilities, as well as develop new relationships with researchers at the cutting edge of the field.

The Unit works alongside IGL’s policy experts and partners to ensure that our work is taken up by organisations around the world. We also work closely with colleagues focused on experimental methods, to explore how novel data sources and methodologies could allow us to deliver better policy experiments. We focus on creating new ways to measure policy outcomes, determine additionality and build evidence for novel policy solutions.

The post holder might work on projects that map innovation ecosystems and emerging clusters, explore how public innovation funding is addressing societal challenges, map innovation collaborations identifying missing links, or provide more granular and real-time estimates of the impacts of business support programmes. This will use a range of data including academic publications, patents, code repositories, business registries and more.

The post holder will report to IGL’s Head of Data Science and Technology.

As a data scientist in IGL’s Data and Technology Unit, you will:

• Deliver applied, data and AI driven projects ranging from building data pipelines, to carrying out research, to prototyping tools

• Design and scope projects with colleagues from a range of disciplines, as well as policymakers and external researchers

• Communicate the outputs of your work to a range of audiences, including through interactive charts and tools

• Help IGL stay at the cutting edge of data science and AI and their uses in policy

Skills and Qualifications

• A Bachelor or Masters qualification in a relevant quantitative discipline and relevant experience in academia, industry or public/third sector 

Or

• At least three years of relevant experience in academia, industry or public/third sector

Plus

• Experience programming in Python;

• Experience using data and evidence to drive better outcomes or business improvement;

• Modelling skills, which might include machine learning, statistical methods, causal inference or other techniques;

• Ability to translate problems and questions into projects that can be answered using data science approaches;

• Willingness to be an active team member who collaborates with others and contributes to strengthening team connections; 

• Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders, both verbally and in written form (blogs, reports, papers); 

• Experience using Git and GitHub (or equivalent) for version control.

Desirable skills

• Domain knowledge in a field relevant to IGL’s policy areas and objectives (science, innovation, business and entrepreneurship systems and policy);

• Proven project management experience, including the ability to lead projects, and make decisions and prioritise tasks to keep projects on track and ensure outputs are of a high quality; 

• Experience delivering data science or analytics projects at pace; 

• Experience communicating findings in novel ways;

• A degree of experience of data or ML engineering methods such as scalable data collection, data pipeline technologies or database management systems; 

• Experience programming in R;

What we offer:

Salary: £47,900 - £64,000 (offers are expected to be made towards the bottom/middle of the band depending on experience) plus array of benefits.

Location: This role is based in London, Blackfriars, hybrid working arrangement with a minimum of two days in the office. These are currently Tuesday and Thursday.

Term: Permanent

Hours:  We offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.

Making an application

To apply for this role, please submit your application by 8am, Monday 6 January 2025.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results. 

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop. 

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful. 

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.   

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.