Deputy Director Analytical Standards & Knowledge in London

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health. UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health.

As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

• Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security
• Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health
• Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks
• Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise
• Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats and reduce inequalities.

The Deputy Director role provides strategic leadership and direction across substantial areas of UKHSA business. The postholder will be accountable for delivering cross-cutting objectives, influencing senior stakeholders (including Ministers), and ensuring policy and operational delivery meets Government priorities. The Deputy Director operates in ambiguous and politically sensitive environments, providing authoritative advice, taking decisions with significant implications for public expenditure, policy direction, or UKHSA reputation. The Deputy Director defines the vision for analysis across a whole division. They shape analytical strategy, influence policy at ministerial level and across UKHSA, champion professional standards, and ensure the analytical workforce is capable, impactful, and aligned to government priorities.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Providing strategic and functional leadership across the division and directorate.
• Setting the vision, priorities, and culture for excellence.
• Ensuring work underpins agency objectives and priorities.
• Potentially overseeing a civil service profession as UKHSA Head of Profession.
• Representing UKHSA in cross-government meetings and boards.
• Ensuring compliance with government standards for analysis and assessment (where applicable).
• Securing resources, capability, and professional development opportunities.
• Providing senior assurance and accountability for advice to senior officials.
• Provide strategic leadership for analytical standards, methods, and inequalities, ensuring UKHSA’s analysis is robust, consistent, and equity-focused.
• Oversee methodological consultancy and expert advisory functions, ensuring high-quality analytical support across AIA and the wider agency.
• Lead analytical governance and quality assurance, ensuring compliance with statutory requirements, the Code of Practice for Statistics, and cross-government standards.
• Act as UKHSA’s Head of Profession for Government Statistics Service.
• Strengthen analytical capability across UKHSA, overseeing tools, training, and professional development programmes that raise analytical quality.

We pride ourselves as being an employer of choice, where Everyone Matters promoting equality of opportunity to actively encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce. UKHSA ethos is to be an inclusive organisation for all our staff and stakeholders. To create, nurture and sustain an inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative solutions to meet the needs of our workforce and wider communities. We do this through celebrating and protecting differences by removing barriers and promoting equity and equality of opportunity for all.

Essential Criteria:

• Bachelor’s degree with significant analytical content (e.g., statistics, data science, epidemiology, or similar), or at least 6 years of relevant experience in a comparable analytical or health-related field.
• Proven experience in strategic leadership across large, complex organisations.
• Experience shaping analytical or professional strategies.
• Ability to set vision and priorities, aligning work to organisational objectives.
• Track record of building high-performing, inclusive teams and fostering a positive culture.
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills at senior levels.
• Experience representing an organisation at internal and external senior meetings.
• Demonstrated ability to manage resources and capability at scale.
• Ability to provide authoritative advice in politically sensitive or ambiguous environments.
• Proven ability to set and uphold professional analytical standards across large organisations.
• Expertise in analytical quality assurance frameworks and compliance with statistical regulations.
• Experience driving methodological innovation and reproducibility in analytical outputs.
• Ability to lead capability-building initiatives for analytical staff.
• Expertise in health inequalities analysis and evidence-based policy development.
• Be a badged Government Statistical Group in good standing.

Desirable Criteria:

• Master’s degree or PhD in an analytical or health-related discipline (e.g., biostatistics, public health, health economics).
• Knowledge of public health or analytical professions within government.
• Excellent understanding of government standards, governance, and compliance requirements.
• Evidence of driving innovation and continuous improvement at organisational level.
• Familiarity with reproducible analytical pipelines (RAP).
• Experience fostering collaboration with academia and external partners.
• Knowledge of literature review methodologies and their application in modelling.

This role will influence key stakeholders including internal directors and external government departments, academic leaders, and private sector leaders.

Working for the Civil Service, we embrace diversity and promote equal opportunities. The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition.

Benefits of working at UKHSA include generous annual leave, access to a defined benefit pension scheme, flexible working patterns, and a supportive environment for career development.