Higher Data Scientist - ( Ref : 6768 )

Job summary

Job description

Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society.

Our Role

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.

• Recovering Nature – Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places – Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing – Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature – Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at:

Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK.

The Team

Data Science Services (DSS) is part of the Analysis Directorate. We are a large, national team and have broad skills including data science, analysis and statistics. We are passionate about quality technical delivery and continuous improvement, using novel data science approaches to help everyone understand nature recovery.

Job description

This role will primarily oversee a variety of small teams and programmes / projects to manage, process, and analyse non-spatial data to create quality reproducible products that inform evidence-led advice and decision making within NE and partner organisations. The holder of this post will design and oversee the delivery of robust data processing flows and complex data analysis, communicate methods and outputs effectively to various stakeholders, and implement data standards and quality assurance on a range of projects using both marine and terrestrial data.

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

• Support Senior and Higher Data Scientists and Specialists in establishing and prioritising business and functional requirements for protected sites data and information and ensuring Natural England’s non-spatial evidence can meet these requirements.
• Lead, manage and monitor delivery of specific evidence projects.
• Effectively engage with internal and external stakeholders.
• Provide technical non-spatial (and potentially spatial) data management advice, analysis and expertise for relevant projects – e.g. Conservation Advice.
• Work with colleagues to ensure data and information are managed appropriately and made available and accessible to staff across Natural England, and external stakeholders, including through analysis and interpretation.
• Ensure that the data are collected, collated and stored to adhere to relevant data standards.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Experience designing, maintaining and querying relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MS Access) and managing large, multiformat datasets.
• Experience maintaining data processing, transformation or ETL workflows to support operational evidence products.
• Experience writing and maintaining SQL queries for data extraction, transformation and validation.
• Experience applying data validation, quality assurance and quality control procedures.
• Knowledge of designated sites and features.
• Experience of project management, with ability to plan and deliver interdependent tasks to schedule.
• Familiarity with data standards such as INSPIRE and data management principles, such as QFAIR.
• Experience working with data and metadata processes, procedures and workflows.
• Experience with VBA or other scripting languages for automation.
• Familiarity with reference management software – e.g. EndNote.

Benefits

At Natural England, we support a healthy work-life balance by offering full-time, part-time, and flexible working arrangements.

We provide excellent opportunities for career progression, training, and development tailored to your role. This includes ten days annually for personal learning and development, plus three additional days for volunteering.

You’ll receive a generous leave allowance of 25 days per year (pro rata), increasing by one day for each year of service up to 30 days (pro-rata), access to the Civil Service Pension scheme with a 28.97% employer contribution, and a range of benefits such as shopping discounts and a cycle-to-work scheme. Staff can also join the Civil Service Sport club for discounts on sports, leisure activities, and social events.

We are committed to fairness, equality, and inclusivity. Our employee-led diversity networks help foster a welcoming environment where everyone feels valued and supported.

Locations

Natural England has adopted hybrid working – which means our staff work from a flexible range of locations, encompassing home, offices (ours and our partners) and relevant sites. All new staff will be formally linked to one of our 25 offices across England, and the expectation is that all new staff will be able to access their local office to be part of the community of staff in their geographical area. Staff are expected to attend their associated office for 20% of their contractual hours.

Staff members are required to carry out all their duties working in this way and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time. Travel expenses will be paid if work-related travel is required but does not apply to travel between home and your associated office.

National team roles can be linked with any Natural England office while Area Team roles will be linked with an office in the relevant geographic area.

View a map of our office locations here: online map of Natural England office locations

Pay

It is Natural England policy to employ at the entry point of the salary range.

Please note: Licensed visa sponsoring organisations are employers authorised by the government to recruit and sponsor overseas workers, enabling them to obtain the appropriate visa to work legally in the country. Natural England is NOT a licensed sponsorship employer.

As part of the Natural England’s application process, candidates are asked to confirm their right to work and remain in the UK. If a candidate says that they meet these requirements, ID is checked, a provisional offer of permanent employment is made and pre-employment eligibility checks commence. Only after these checks are candidates given firm offers of employment.

Natural England is unable to employ individual