Overview

Data Scientist role at Nesta. Nesta is the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our missions include giving every child a fair start, helping people live healthy lives, and creating a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet.

We have worked for over 20 years to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner, as a venture builder, and as a system shaper to create the conditions for innovation. Find out more at Nesta.org.uk.

The role

Nesta’s Data Science Practice is looking for a Data Scientist to lead projects that bring the best approaches from data science and analytics to impact Nesta’s Healthy Life Mission. Our work is varied and may include training machine learning models, building web applications, or using analytical techniques to answer questions and generate solutions to policy challenges. In health, this means working with large-scale datasets and turning them into actionable insights for policy makers, corporations and individuals. This is an opportunity to design and deliver data science projects that contribute to real-world outcomes for public benefit.

The team

We are focusing on Nesta’s Healthy Life mission: increasing the number of years lived in good health, particularly for those affected by health inequalities. Our current focus includes improving food environments and making healthy food more available, accessible, affordable, appealing and convenient. We work across sectors with businesses, policymakers, local government, academics and other charities to drive the changes needed to improve health.

The person

We are a team of analytical and technical experts from diverse backgrounds, driven to use our expertise for social impact. A strong candidate will be motivated to apply analytical and data science skills to achieve impact in the public sector or industry.

The successful candidate will have the ability to employ a broad range of techniques as appropriate to each task, work flexibly and quickly, and adapt to new domain and project contexts. This role requires strong project delivery skills — the ability to start projects quickly and deliver to a high standard while collaborating with others across the team and organisation.

Your responsibilities

• Deliver data-driven projects that advance Nesta’s missions, including research and analysis, model development, and related outputs.
• Design and scope projects with technical colleagues, domain experts and practitioners from other disciplines.
• Communicate outputs to a wide range of internal and external audiences.
• Ensure work is reproducible, sustainable and ethically considered.
• Keep abreast of new techniques and developments and explore how to apply them.

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
• Strong data analysis skills, including machine learning, statistics, causal inference or other techniques
• Willingness to collaborate and strengthen team connections
• Ability to design data science approaches that solve problems and answer questions
• Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders with clear outputs (blogs, reports, papers)
• Experience using Git and GitHub (or equivalent) for version control
• Domain knowledge relevant to Nesta’s mission
• Proven project management experience, including leading projects and prioritising tasks
• Experience delivering data science or analytics projects at pace
• Experience communicating findings with stakeholders
• Experience with data engineering methods (e.g., scalable data collection, data pipelines, or database systems)
• Experience programming in R

What we offer

Salary: £49,200 - £65,800 (offers are expected to be made toward the bottom of the band) plus benefits including private medical and dental insurance, annual leave options, eyecare vouchers and more

Location: London, hybrid with a minimum of two days in the office

Term: Permanent

Hours: Full-time with flexible working arrangements

Reports to: Principal Data Scientist

Flexibility: Job-share available

Making an application

To apply, please submit your application before September 16th at 8.00am.

The next stage of the process will include a technical task by the end of September with interviews in the week commencing 6th October (dates to be confirmed).

Equality, diversity and inclusion

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to a more innovative and effective organisation. We actively seek a diverse pool of candidates and will consider reasonable adjustments to support applicants throughout the process. We also support flexible working arrangements, including remote work, part-time hours and job shares. Please indicate any adjustments you may need in your application or at any stage.