Early Career Health Data Scientist , BHF Data Science Centre

The Early Career Health Data Scientist will join our Health Data Science team and will contribute to the development of scalable, reusable, and well-documented resources that help researchers efficiently curate high-quality, analysis-ready data for their research projects. The post-holder will work with senior colleagues and researchers to identify common data curation challenges, develop solutions that can be reused across projects, and share good practice through code, documentation and guidance.

These resources may include:

• Data dictionaries, dataset summaries and shared exploratory analyses and insights that help researchers understand the characteristics, quality and limitations of datasets and how they can appropriately be used on research projects.
• Coding tutorials, guidance notes, and worked examples to help researchers develop the technical skills needed to curate data within Secure Data Environments.
• Reusable code, functions, and data curation pipelines that researchers can adapt for their own projects, reducing duplication and accelerating the data curation phase of their project
• Curated data
  methods that produce cleaned and enhanced views of datasets and can be integrated into data curation pipelines, reducing the need to repeatedly implement equivalent data processing and validation logic across projects.

The post-holder will provide direct, hands-on support to researchers, either by providing guidance and sign-posting to existing data curation resources relevant to their project, or by providing targeted, bespoke solutions where appropriate. This may include helping researchers identify suitable datasets and existing curation resources, adapting reusable code and pipelines, and developing project-specific data curation approaches to produce robust, analysis-ready data.

The post-holder will also undertake data quality and exploratory analyses to help assess the quality, completeness and utility of datasets, identify potential issues and limitations, and understand how data can be appropriately used to address specific research questions. Findings from this work will contribute to shared knowledge and resources that can benefit researchers across programmes.

This post is an attractive career development opportunity, which would suit a health data scientist, data analyst, data engineer who can demonstrate previous experience of data wrangling and curation of health data for research projects, and who wishes to expand and deepen their expertise in large-scale, linked health data, and collaborative research environments. Due to the high number of applications in previous recruitment rounds, we would encourage applications only from candidates with relevant experience of working with linked administrative healthcare data in a professional or research setting who are looking to build on this experience.

• Providing data engineering and data curation support in secure data environments (SDEs) and trusted research environments (TREs) to produce robust, analysis-ready datasets.
• Contributing to the development, testing, and maintenance of reproducible and well-documented data curation pipelines and shared resources under the supervision of senior colleagues.
• Developing and applying expertise in the assessment of data quality, completeness, and data utility of the various routinely collected health datasets across the four devolved nations, including contributing to early feasibility and exploratory assessments to inform study design. Summarising and disseminating findings and lessons from data quality and data utility assessments to inform research design and appropriate use of routinely collected data.
• Under the supervision of senior colleagues, writing, organising and…