Senior Data Scientist - ( Ref : 6886 )

The Team is responsible for delivering Natural England’s part of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA).

The NCEA is a transformative programme to understand the extent, condition and change over time of environmental assets across England's land and water environments, supporting the government’s ambition to improve the environment within a generation. Data will come from Earth Observation, professional field data collection, citizen science and partner data sets.

Natural England’s NCEA Is Organised Into Projects:

• Mapping and Earth Observation – Spatial data and maps on natural capital to inform national and local decision making and delivery.
• England Peat Map – Mapping the extent and condition of England’s peatlands.
• Field data collection – Data on habitats, soils, landscapes and species to understand the condition of natural capital assets.
• Citizen Science – Working with citizens and community science to fill gaps, provide local and landscape scale information and engaging the public.
• Data Engagement and Analysis - Making NCEA, partner and volunteer data available for analysis, integration, and use. Producing high quality evidence products by analysing and integration NCEA data.

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

To lead the development and delivery of robust analytical and data programmes and projects to increase efficiency and provide improved evidence to support the organisation’s strategic objectives. To apply specialist skills and domain expertise to identify opportunities for data science to improve the evidence base to support the organisation’s strategic objectives. To ensure quality and promote appropriate use of data and analysis (including uncertainty) to minimise risk and increase robustness of evidence underpinning advice, decision-making and delivery.

• Oversee small teams and programmes of work / lead, oversee and carry out complex data and spatial analyses to meet the evidence needs of a variety of Natural England, Defra group and other stakeholders.
• Put in place project data standards, processes and systems to ensure outputs are high-quality and robust (including through good documentation and automation) so that customer decisions and advice can be based on sound evidence and outputs can be reproduced.
• Understand organisational objectives and engage with business planning processes to provide technical intel and assist with prioritisation and scoping of projects and programmes.
• Liaise with project managers and teams to establish project planning and resourcing so that projects are delivered efficiently, with appropriate resource and capability, to a high standard, and progress, risks and issues can be monitored.
• Engage with customers and partners to identify and exploit opportunities for new or revised projects (inc use of new technologies), or for bringing together projects into programmes of work, which will improve the evidence base, improve efficiency, build capability or generate funding.
• Build capability in others in the team and across NE (as appropriate) to enable effective delivery and support resilience to absence and change.
• Liaise with relevant partners/authorities/professional networks to understand and interpret advice, standards and best practice for relevant application in NE.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• People leadership skills / experience in either a functional or line management context
• Experience of planning and leading the delivery of projects
• Data analysis skills relevant to specific role – this would usually include:
• data extraction/ingestion and preparation, exploratory data analysis, and data visualisation
• working with a range of large scale spatial and non-spatial data types in both structured and unstructured formats
• experience working with (preferably combining) a range of biological, geographical and social data o experience of coding in Python and R,
• knowledge of mathematics, statistics, and algorithms
• experience in Machine Learning / Deep Learning applications o experience in GIS software (e.g. ArcPro, ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, QGIS)
• knowledge of relevant data/metadata standards
• understanding of good practice, ethics, and quality assurance for data analysis
• working with databases, web-based applications, open-source software and APIs
• For specific roles also one or more of: experience of a range of statistical techniques and applications (e.g. SAS, SPSS, R) for identifying relationships between data and for inference, parametric and non‑parametric analysis and methods for quantifying uncertainty. accredited Government Statistician or able to attain accreditation within first year in post. remote sensing and/or Earth observation analysis experience, preferably with a good knowledge of statistical and image analysis software packages.

Technical Skills and Knowledge

• Experience of, and ability to appropriately apply, data analysis, modelling, or statistical techniques
• Experience of using appropriate methods for quality assurance of data and methodology
• Experience handling data, such as data cleaning, data transformation (e.g., changing data structure), integrating different data types (e.g., spatial and non-spatial data) or data from different sources, and moving data between different formats or systems.
• Good data management skills and experience of working within data licencing and data standards (e.g. metadata standards, Open Data, GDPR, etc.).
• Knowledge and experience of a data analysis and manipulation programming language such as R or Python.
• Working knowledge of spatial analysis and software such as desktop ESRI ArcGIS products (e.g. ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro etc.)
• Knowledge and experience of databases and other data storage technologies such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, etc. and familiarity with languages such SQL. Experience with cloud-based tools and infrastructure e.g. AWS and Microsoft Azure Experience of data publishing tools such as RMarkdown, RShiny and PowerBI.

Leading and Managing People

• Lead by example, engage and support your team through change (Practitioner).
• Set clear plans and expectations for your team, explain reasons behind decisions, be clear on the outcomes to be achieved, and make things happen by sharing and delegating work to the right people (Practitioner).
• Encourage, inspire and support people to be ambitious, creative and innovative, and to reflect, celebrate and learn lessons from their work (Practitioner).

Putting People at The Heart of The Environment

• Build relationships and effective networks both externally and internally to bring in fresh perspectives, approaches and evidence to raise the profile of both your individual specialist work and that of Natural England (Expert).
• Listen to and understand our diverse partners and customers so that you achieve the best outcomes for them and Natural England (Practitioner).
• Nurture trusting partnerships and collaborate to achieve pragmatic outcomes that help deliver Natural England’s vision, mission and aims (Practitioner).

Personal Effectiveness

• Develop and implement effective communication strategies and plans that deliver corporate objectives (Expert).
• Understand the full context of each case or project you work on and use interpretive, evaluative, analytical and problem‑solving skills to make informed decisions about it (Expert).
• Test and challenge others in a constructive and evidence‑based way providing scientific scrutiny, challenge and assurance to casework and other delivery that is practical and, where appropriate, cross‑disciplinary (Expert).

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