We are recruiting for a Data Scientist to join the Innovation Growth Lab

Overview

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 is seeking to build its capability for using data analytics to uncover and realise opportunities to improve the effectiveness and equity of innovation and business policy. We also want to explore how novel data sources and methodologies could allow us to deliver better experiments, creating new ways to measure policy outcomes and determine additionality. 

The successful candidate will work closely with Nesta’s Data Analytics Practice (DAP), who have been pioneering the use of data to map and understand innovation. DAP is a methodologically diverse team that uses techniques including statistics, machine learning, natural language processing and network science. 

Through their work, the post holder will use such methods and their own expertise to help build IGL’s portfolio of work in this area, which aims to better understand the problems and opportunities for innovation and business policy, to inform policy interventions, to develop solutions, and to evaluate their impacts. 

For instance, 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.

The role

The Data Scientist will:

• Work closely with the IGL team, Nesta’s Data Analytics Practice, our research network and policy partners to find and develop ideas for how data science could be used to raise economic wellbeing and sustainability through improving innovation and business policy.

• Deliver and help to design data-oriented research projects that meet the needs of users to inform and evaluate policy interventions.

• Analyse relevant data (including web-based, open and/or official data) using data science methods such as supervised and unsupervised machine learning, natural language processing or network science.

• Develop and apply methodologies that are relevant for understanding and supporting innovation. Some examples include predicting and nowcasting the growth of small businesses, or using network analysis to identify gaps in research collaboration networks 

• Help to ensure that the team stays at the cutting edge of the field by:

  • Identifying relevant research questions and how they might be addressed

  • Staying abreast of the latest techniques and developments that are relevant for current projects and the wider team

  • Communicate findings through conferences and peer-reviewed papers, research notes, blogs, data visualisations and open source code

The Person

Required:

• Strong experience in a relevant quantitative discipline (this could be from a formal qualification such as a Masters or PhD or from equivalent experience from work or other projects).

• Fluent with a data science programming language and analytical stack (preferably Python, which is the main language used by Nesta’s Data Analytics Practice; we also welcome applications from candidates who are fluent in R).

• Experience applying supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods,

• Experience working with unstructured data such as text or networks

• Experience collecting and processing web data from APIs and via web scraping

• With a genuine interest in the fields of innovation, productivity, entrepreneurship and/or business growth.

• Strong communication skills, including a proven ability to present and write up technical work and research findings in ways that are clear, compelling and credible.

• An excellent team player, with the ability to work flexibly and sensitively with others, including policymakers, businesses and researchers.

• Adaptable – flexible in approach and able to manage competing and changing priorities.

• Able to learn quickly and a strong desire to develop experience in new research areas and methodologies.

• Intellectually curious – will look at things critically and ask new and important questions.

• Entrepreneurial - will identify and pursue opportunities for high impact projects.

• Pragmatic and able to produce high-quality, accurate outputs to deadlines.

Desirable

• Experience using collaborative software development methods such as GitHub

• Experience with causal inference methods

• Experience analysing datasets relevant for the understanding of economic growth and innovation (e.g. economic data, patents, research publications, funding data etc.)

Host organisation & location & contract term

IGL’s team is primarily based at Nesta in the UK, but IGL has recently opened an office in Spain hosted by the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE). 

The successful candidate will become an employee of Nesta if they are based in the UK and an employee of the BSE if they are based in Spain. Please note that appointments in the UK will require having the right to work in the UK, and appointments in Spain will require having the right to work in the EU.

Nesta and BSE have different employment policies and benefits, and the initial contract term length offered is also different: 24 months if based at BSE, up to 31 March 2023 if based at Nesta, with possibilities of extension in both cases (In the past IGL has always extended initial contracts and this continues to be our intention for the future too). 

What we offer

Salary: £38k-£50k plus array of benefits, including health cash plans, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more  

Location: London or Barcelona. We offer the flexibility to work remotely as long as the person is able to travel to the office for day trips when necessary. Please note that for appointments made in the UK, employment will be with Nesta, while for appointments made in Barcelona, employment will be with the Barcelona School of Economics.

Term:   FTC to 31.03.23 if employed by Nesta and based in London or FTC of 24 months from the start date, if employed by BSE and based in Barcelona. Possibility of an extension in both scenarios.

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do. 

Reports to: Head of EA and PD, IGL

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on the 20th of April 2022.

Interviews will take place w/c 25th of April 2022.

Second interviews will take place w/c 2nd of May 2022, with a technical task.

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.