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Data Scientist — Public Health Analytics
Nadia Kowalski
Full-time · Mid-level · London
About the role
This role sits within the analytical division of a UK national public health agency. Our team provides statistical modelling and data analysis to support policy decisions on communicable disease surveillance, vaccination programme evaluation, and health inequalities monitoring. The work is not fast. Policy decisions in public health are measured in months, sometimes years. A model that we are developing now to support seasonal influenza vaccine uptake targeting will inform commissioning decisions for the 2026 season. The data we work with is real, sensitive, and representative — not a sample, not synthetic, not a benchmark. Hundreds of thousands of individual-level records from NHS datasets, population surveys, and surveillance systems. We are looking for a mid-level data scientist with genuine statistical grounding and the discipline to work carefully on problems where the output informs decisions that affect population health. The role is in the analytical civil service. It is not the fastest-moving environment. The problems are real, the data is exceptional, and the work matters.
Responsibilities
- Conduct statistical analyses supporting seasonal vaccination programme targeting and evaluation
- Build and maintain surveillance dashboards for communicable disease monitoring, used by epidemiologists and policy analysts
- Prepare analytical reports suitable for both technical peer review and policy briefing — two very different documents from the same analysis
- Work with information governance leads to ensure analytical outputs meet NHS DSP Toolkit requirements
- Mentor junior analysts and contribute to the team's shared analytical code library
Requirements
- 3–5 years of data science or statistical analysis with experience in a health, research, or public sector context
- Strong Python for data analysis and modelling: Pandas, Scikit-learn, and the discipline to write reproducible analytical code
- SQL for extracting and manipulating large datasets from NHS and public health administrative systems
- Statistics at depth — logistic regression, mixed effects models, survival analysis, and the ability to communicate uncertainty honestly
- R is used by several team members and the ability to read and translate R analysis is practically useful
- Familiarity with UK health data systems — NHS Digital datasets, ONS population data, or UKHSA surveillance data — is a meaningful advantage
Benefits
- Civil Service pension — one of the most valuable employer-contribution benefit schemes in the UK
- £48,000 – £58,000 per annum — civil service scale, transparent and published
- Hybrid — two days per week in our Colindale, London office
- 25 days annual leave rising to 30 with service, plus bank holidays
- Access to national-level NHS and public health datasets unavailable outside the public sector
Job Type
Full-time
Level
Mid-level
Language
English
Salary Range
£48,000 – £58,000
AI Expertise
data science & analytics
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