Senior Data Scientist

at  Department for Work and Pensions

JOB SUMMARY

This role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see ‘Security Clearance Requirement’.
Are you looking for a leadership role where you can use data science to influence, innovate and inspire improvements? Would you love the opportunity to use our wealth of data to inform the customer journey for millions of users?
DWP is the UK’s largest government department. We help people into work and make payments worth over £195bn a year to support some of society’s most vulnerable people.
In Retirement Services, we are responsible for running and transforming digital services. We ensure people over state pension age can plan for and secure all the support they need to live a life without unnecessary hardship. Every year we pay over £120 billion to 18 million DWP customers, including 1 million overseas customers residing in 229 countries.
We are a key part of DWP’s modernisation story with commitments to deliver end-to-end service transformation across the support we provide to citizens and DWP staff.
If you have strong stakeholder management skills and think that data science can transform how government services work, we’d love to hear from you.

JOB DESCRIPTION

As a Senior Data Scientist, you will be part of the Analytics team working with Digital Performance Analysts, Business Analysts and other Data Scientists to deliver insights from data to a diverse range of stakeholders according to their unique needs.
You will lead data discovery work, exploring back- and front-end data from our digital services to find opportunities for performance optimisation. By working closely with digital product teams, you will build up expertise which will allow you to provide ad-hoc analysis at pace and shape the services we deliver to citizens.
You will support the safe migration of State Pension and Pension Credit claimants to a new, modern IT estate. By scrutinising a variety of data sources and working with subject matter experts to understand how complex policies and calculations can be implemented and optimised, you will support a seamless transition of pension benefits to a transformed digital service.
You will also have the opportunity to develop new analytics capabilities for Retirement Services, such as A/B testing or building Natural Language Processing models to maximise the value of user feedback. You will steer the development of a modernised, data-driven approach to controlling quality and accuracy in Later Life services while aligning to DWP standards and strategies.
Whether working independently, as part of, or leading a team, you will take responsibility for delivering quality outcomes as well as the behaviours displayed by you and your team. You will strive to ensure Retirement Services is a great place to work, where everyone feels safe and supported to work together to achieve shared goals.
Working in DWP Digital you will benefit from a great learning and development offer and a collaborative environment that encourages continuous professional development. You will join a Data Science community and a Data Practice, where you will have the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge with colleagues. You will participate in events and activities that strengthen the community, such as hackathons, show and tells etc.
We care about our employees and can offer you an environment that is family-friendly, supportive and inclusive in an organisation with real social purpose.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Describe a time when you had to learn a skill, build new relationships with stakeholders or become an expert in a topic to deliver insight from data relevant to business context.

Benefits
Alongside your salary, the Department for Work and Pensions contributes 28.97% towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave – at least 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
• Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
• Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
• Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.

This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post.

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

TYPE OF ROLE

Analytical
Architecture and Data
Digital
Engineering
Information Technology

2. Your employment history detailing your responsibilities, skills, accomplishments, plus your qualifications and relevant training in line with the essential below:

• Strong stakeholder management skills and experience of working with a range of people and teams to deliver results and influencing decision-making. Experience of proactively building relationships across different teams, advocating for the use of data and educating stakeholders on the art of the possible with data science.
• Experience in exploring and analysing large, disparate datasets, understanding their limitations and working with subject matter experts to deliver insights relevant in business context at pace.
• Experience of a wide range of analytical, data science and data visualisation techniques and associated limitations, with expertise in a number of techniques including theoretical basis and application.
• Experience of SQL and Python to an advanced level