Data Scientist - fixed term contract in London

Are you a data scientist who wants to work with real‑world NHS data to answer meaningful clinical questions? Join us to help shape a new model of care for women.

Good To Know

Due Date: Apr 30th

About Hesta

Hesta is creating a new benchmark in women’s health, delivering exceptional care at every life stage. As we advance towards this goal, we are committed to closing the women’s health gap, beginning with pregnancy and postnatal as our initial focus.

The Opportunity

Hesta is building a new model of women’s healthcare and our first mission is to reimagine care for mothers through compassionate care, clinical excellence, and technology. Today, postnatal care is fragmented, reactive, and often fails to identify ongoing health needs. We are developing a clinically‑validated, digital‑first assessment and triage system that identifies early clinical signals and routes women and birthing parents into appropriate care.

We are looking for a Data Scientist (fixed term contract) to deliver technical feasibility work within an Innovate UK‑funded feasibility study assessing whether real‑world data can support clinical triage and predictive modelling for postnatal conditions.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the data and technical feasibility work package, including:
• Define and execute extraction of a retrospective primary care cohort
• Clean, structure, and validate datasets from both product and NHS sources
• Identify early clinical signals at the 6–8 week postnatal check that predict longer‑term conditions
• Apply appropriate statistical and epidemiological methods (e.g., regression, survival analysis)
• Evaluate data quality, completeness, and limitations, and recommend improvements
• Work closely with clinicians to ensure outputs reflect real clinical reasoning
• Handle all data responsibly and within NHS information governance and UK GDPR requirements
• Produce clear, well‑documented outputs: clean datasets, analysis code, and a final feasibility report that a clinician and a funder can both read and trust
• Move quickly. We’re a small team with a fixed timeline and genuine ambitions — we need someone who can hit the ground running

What You’ll Bring

• Hands‑on experience working with real‑world health data, ideally GP EHR data from systems like EMIS or SystemOne
• Strong skills in Python or R — you should be genuinely proficient, not just familiar
• A solid grounding in retrospective cohort design and the statistical approaches that go with it: regression, survival analysis, handling missingness and confounders
• Enough understanding of NHS information governance to work with pseudonymised patient data correctly and confidently
• The ability to explain what you found and why it matters to people who aren’t data scientists — that includes clinicians, project team, and eventually funders
• A proactive mindset. You’ll need to spot the problems, flag them early and propose solutions
• Genuine curiosity about the clinical questions behind the data, not just the method
• Experience with postnatal, maternal or women’s health data specifically
• Familiarity with SNOMED CT or Read codes used in primary care records
• Written up findings before — internal reports, publications, or anything that shows you can go from analysis to narrative

The Practicalities

• Contract: Fixed‑term, part‑time (hours flexible, on average 2 days per week across the period)
• Duration: 6 months (some flexibility in duration; other opportunities may arise)
• Location: London
• Start: ASAP

Company Benefits

• A front‑row seat in an early‑stage, mission‑driven company to build the backbone of a healthcare service designed specifically for women
• Join a small, mission‑driven team where your contributions have immediate impact
• Direct exposure to building a real health economic case for health system adoption
• Close mentorship from founders with experience across NHS, Babylon Health, and scaling health tech businesses
• Opportunity to work on a live, funded project with real impact
• Flexible, hybrid working; our team work is based on the job that needs to be done, not office facetime
• Office facilities: spacious working space, with other innovators in Victoria, bike storage, changing facilities and a healthy supply of tea/coffee