We are recruiting a Principal Data Scientist to be embedded in our Healthy Life Mission (Maternity Cover)

About Nesta

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet. 

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation. 

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk. 

The role

Nesta’s Data Science Practice is looking for a Principal Data Scientist to lead projects that bring the best approaches from data science and analytics to impact our Healthy Life Mission. Our work is highly varied, and could include training a model for a web application or using novel data science techniques to answer questions and build knowledge to change policy. In health, it often means getting to grips with large scale commercial and public health datasets and turning them into actionable insights for policy makers, corporations, and individuals. This is an opportunity to play a leading role in designing and delivering data science projects. If you have a strong background working with data and are motivated by deploying creative data science solutions, as well as contributing to real-world outcomes for public benefit, then this role is for you. 

The team

We are seeking a principal data scientist to work in Nesta’s ‘A Healthy Life’ mission: We want to increase the number of years lived in good health for all, and particularly those most affected by health inequalities. We are focusing on tackling one of the biggest drivers of lost years of healthy life: obesity. Our primary focus currently is on improving our food environments i.e. making healthy food more available, accessible, affordable, appealing and convenient for all. We work across sectors - with businesses, national policymakers, local government, academics and other charities - in order to drive the changes we need to see to improve health.

The person

We are a team of analytical and technical experts from a range of backgrounds bound by the drive to use our expertise to have social impact. 

A strong candidate for this role will have a track record of putting their analytical and data science skills to work to achieve impact in the public sector or industry. They will have the ability to demonstrate owning and shaping the data science journey from sourcing data to end use by system leaders, decision makers, or citizens. The successful candidate will have the ability to exercise significant range in the techniques they choose to deploy, and the ability to select the appropriate methods for the task at hand.  Critically, this role requires the ability to design analytical projects that focus on making a tangible difference to mission goals in collaboration with experts from other domains. 

Diversity is our strength. If you are unsure whether your experience doesn’t fit a ‘typical’ data scientist profile, but have valuable experience to offer, we are interested in hearing from you. For example, you might class yourself as a statistician who is also comfortable with predictive methods. You might be a data scientist who likes to dip their toes into engineering and writing robust pipelines. Or maybe you are a technical product manager looking to get back to doing more hands-on technical work. You might have a background in research or applied data science and be looking to continue that work or diversify the types of projects you do. 

As a Principal Data Scientist at Nesta you will:

• Deliver data-driven projects that advance Nesta’s health mission, ranging from research and analysis to model development;

• Design, scope and deliver projects with technical colleagues, domain experts and practitioners from other disciplines that focus on improving the evidence for or delivering direct  impact on the mission goals; 

• Spot opportunities for data science and analysis to contribute to improving healthy life years and reducing health inequality, and design project to deliver that impact; 

• Communicate outputs of your work to a wide range of internal and external audiences;

• Manage more junior team members, providing mentorship and technical guidance;

• Help the team stay at the cutting edge by keeping abreast of new techniques and developments in the field and seeking ways to use them

• Alongside specialists in the Data Science Practice, ensure that all work takes advantage of data science to be reproducible, sustainable, and ethically considered. 

Skills and Qualifications

• A Bachelor or Masters qualification in a relevant quantitative discipline plus three years of relevant experience in academia, industry or public/third sector

Or

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

Plus

• Strong experience programming in Python, and a familiarity with using R;

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

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

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

• Ability to design data science approaches that will solve problems and answer questions; 

• Ability to make decisions and prioritise tasks to keep projects on track and ensure outputs are of a high quality; 

• Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders, with evidence of clear and structured written outputs such as blogs, reports or papers; 

• Line management or mentorship experience; 

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

Desirable

• Domain knowledge in a field relevant to Nesta’s Healthy Life mission which could include (but not limited to) public health, healthcare, economics, or experience in a data science or analytics role in a retail or commercial setting. 

• Experience delivering data science or analytics projects at pace; 

• Experience communicating findings with a range of senior stakeholders; 

• Experience of data engineering methods such as scalable data collection (e.g. APIs, web-scraping), data pipeline technologies (e.g. Airflow, Luigi, Metaflow) or database management systems (SQL or NoSQL); 

• Experience programming in R; 

• Project management experience.

What we offer

Salary: £53,000 - £66,000 (please note offers are expected to be made towards the bottom of the band) plus array of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more  

Location: This role is based in London, hybrid working arrangement with a minimum of two days in the office

Term:   Maternity cover, 12 months

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 Data Science

Flexibility: This role is available to be a job-share.  

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 08.00am on 13th March 2024.

Interviews (first and second round) will take place between 18th March - 5th April 2024; exact dates to be confirmed. 

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.