Principal Data Scientist in England

Salary: £57,815 - £65,021 per annum with potential for further progression to £73,211 with our pay progression scheme.

Location: Hybrid. Contracted to our Wilmslow, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast office; however, we offer flexible home and office-based working opportunities. Please note from Autumn 2026 our head office will relocate from Wilmslow to Manchester city centre.

Why work for the ICO:

• Pay progression scheme.
• Hybrid and flexible working options.
• 25 days paid holiday per year plus privilege and public holidays.
• Flexi leave (up to 26 additional days leave per year).
• Pension (employer contribution around 28.9%).
• Online discount scheme to save money at major supermarkets, retailers, gyms, restaurants, insurance providers, and many more.
• Health Cash Plan.
• Fantastic development opportunities to learn and progress.

Job summary:

We are looking for a skilled professional to join our Analytics and AI team. You will work closely with stakeholders to identify and prioritise AI opportunities, ensuring outputs are explainable, responsible, and embedded effectively within the organisation. Collaboration is key; you will partner with data analysts, engineers, and product owners to create solutions that meet business needs while contributing to frameworks that uphold ethics, transparency, and performance. Additionally, you will support the ICO Data Academy to boost data literacy and stay ahead of emerging trends in AI and analytics to drive innovation and value.

The role will form part of our analytics and AI function providing technical expertise in the disciplines of analytics and AI. The role will help unlock insight from our wealth of internal data and advise and deliver on the best methodologies for the problem at hand. The role will primarily involve engaging with internal stakeholders to deliver analytics and AI solutions that provide value and benefit to the organisation while ensuring outputs are high quality, accurate, and consider data privacy and data ethics by design. Outputs might include reports and dashboards, data and statistical analyses, or products that utilise artificial intelligence technologies.

Key responsibilities:

• To build, develop, and test AI and analytics products that align with ICO's business strategies and provide value in a timely, accurate, and ethical manner, ensuring outputs are explainable, responsible, and embedded effectively within the organisation.
• To identify, define, and prioritise new AI opportunities that might offer value to the organisation.
• Feed into the mechanisms/frameworks that provide assurances that AI solutions are built responsibly and considerations such as explainability, ethics, and model performance are thoroughly considered and monitored.
• Work closely with product delivery mechanisms to retain critical stakeholder engagement throughout the development of solutions and successful embedment at the time of implementation.
• Work closely with the Senior Data Analysts, Senior Data Engineers, and Data Product Owners to ensure AI and analytics solutions are designed collaboratively, meet business needs, and are embedded effectively into operational workflows.
• Play an active role in our new data literacy initiative, the ICO Data Academy, helping to support the empowerment of data skills and awareness for our colleagues and supporting the broader data analytics community that exists within the ICO.
• Remain continuously informed of new developments in the fields of data analytics and AI to assess whether emerging techniques and innovation might be applied within the organisation to drive new impact and value.

Person specification:

Essential criteria assessed at application stage:

• Substantial experience relevant to the role requirements as described in the role responsibilities and person specification.
• Delivering AI solutions as part of a data science team utilising open source coding languages such as Python and building Machine Learning models/Large Language Models.
• Working in cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure and utilising cloud services.
• Delivering AI solutions within an ethics and governance framework.
• Supporting data science capability building across a team and wider organisation.

Essential criteria assessed during interview:

• An understanding of how analytics and AI can be used to drive value within an organisation.
• Technical understanding across a wide range of data analysis, data science, and AI techniques including but not limited to exploratory data analysis, statistics, machine learning, operational research, data visualisation, NLP, and generative AI.
• Proficient in Python coding language, experience of working within cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, and knowledge of git version control.
• Approaches for measuring and monitoring quality metrics when introducing analytics and AI solutions and products.
• Frameworks/approaches to support responsible AI innovation including identification and prioritisation of new opportunities.
• Ability to proactively engage with stakeholders to understand business challenges and provide solutions.
• Actively keeping informed of industry developments to ensure the relevance of new and emerging approaches and technologies.
• Knowledge of the data protection and privacy landscape regulations and obligations for data practitioners.
• Ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity, creative problem solving, and developing innovative solutions.
• Makes complex and technical information and language simple and accessible for non-technical audiences.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion:

The ICO is committed to promoting and enhancing equality, diversity, and inclusion. We are focused on developing a workforce that is representative of the communities we serve and together we are building an inclusive workplace where all of our colleagues have the opportunity to make a real difference.

Closing Date:

Please submit your CV and cover letter by 23:59 Sunday 11th January 2026. Your cover letter should be no more than 1000 words and should clearly demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria for the role.