Data Scientist at UK Research & Innovation, Swindon, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

Role Purpose

Each year UKRI invests over £9bn of public money into research and innovation. These investments will advance knowledge, improve lives and drive economic growth. Analytical capability underpins UKRI's ability to operate as a trusted and intelligent investor of public funds. To meet this responsibility, UKRI is delivering a programme of work to strengthen analytical capability, ensuring decisions are informed by high quality data and robust analysis.

This role will support that delivery by undertaking hands on analytical work that contributes to UKRI's understanding of the research and innovation system. You will work with UKRI analysts, data engineers and programme teams to develop analyses, test feasibility of analytical approaches, and produce clear, decision ready evidence.

Key responsibilities summary

The role provides delivery focused analytical support to the Advancing Analytical Capabilities (AAC) Programme. It concentrates on rapid, high quality execution across priorities including landscape analysis, system level insight and defined analytical products. The role applies a discovery led approach to assess feasibility and analytical value and moves quickly from analysis to usable outputs. A core responsibility is the hands on delivery of large scale analytical products that draw insight from complex research and innovation datasets.

As a Data Scientist your main responsibilities will be to:

• Deliver analyses of the research and innovation system, including large scale landscape and benchmarking work.
• Apply agreed analytical approaches to assess UKRI and UK performance against international comparators.
• Develop clearly defined analytical outputs, including datasets, metrics, dashboards and briefings, aligned to UKRI priorities.
• Work with data engineers and analysts to ensure analytical requirements are supported by appropriate data and pipelines.
• Undertake discovery led analytical work to test feasibility, assumptions and data limitations for defined workstreams.
• Clearly document analytical methods, assumptions and limitations to support transparency and handover.
• Provide analytical input and technical explanation to support AAC programme delivery.

Essential:

• Strong Python experience (preferred). Candidates with excellent R experience and good Python capability will also be considered.
• Strong hands on experience delivering data science or analytical work using modern tools and practices.
• Demonstrable experience analysing large and complex datasets and producing robust, interpretable results.
• Experience developing and applying metrics and analytical frameworks for comparative analysis.
• Ability to translate analytical outputs into clear, decision focused materials for non technical audiences.
• Experience working in delivery focused roles to agreed milestones.
• Strong documentation and knowledge transfer skills to support sustainable adoption by internal teams.
• Ability to work collaboratively within multidisciplinary analytical and programme teams.
• Bachelor 's or master's degree in a related field, such as statistics, mathematics, computer science; and/or at least 3 years of experience in data analysis and/or data science.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, UKRI guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Commitment

UKRI guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.