Analytical Data Scientist
| Posting date: | 20 June 2024 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £32,858 to £38,272 per year |
| Additional salary information: | National: £32,858 - £34,586 London: £36,583 - £38,272 Analyst allowance of £4,245 (or £6,000 with a relevant masters approved by the relevant Head of Profession). |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 07 July 2024 |
| Location: | Birmingham |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 356034/1 |
Summary
Do you care about the safety of products and want to protect people and places? Can we use your skills, knowledge and experience to enable UK business to thrive? If the answer is yes, then we would like to hear from you!
We are the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), part of the Department for Business & Trade (Previously the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy). We are here for the purpose of making regulation work to deliver real world impact. Regulation is a powerful Government tool to address market failures, influence behaviour and promote positive action. Crafted and delivered well, regulation can be an enabler of growth, innovation and efficiency.
Since early 2018 we have been building a positive and creative team that enjoys a position of influence and respect within an organisation that continues to grow, most recently with the addition of construction products regulation planned.
Our primary purpose is to protect people and places from product-related harm, ensuring consumers and businesses can buy and sell products with confidence
Further information can be found on our website here.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. We embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. There is a guaranteed interview scheme (DCS) for people with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
We are Inclusive
We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible and recognise how important inclusivity is to achieve the best outcomes. We hope to attract applications from all underrepresented groups.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation if required to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
About the Team
The Analysis Team comprises around 26 analysts and provides analytical support for all the Office’s activity. OPSS is a growing organisation, and we have recently taken on responsibility for construction products. Now is an exciting time to get involved and join a rapidly growing team to help craft our thinking around using data to develop new insights into product safety. We have a strong commitment to learning and development and are not afraid to try new and innovative approaches.
About the Role
You will report to and work closely with the Senior members of the team, as well as having the opportunity to lead on certain projects to build your leadership, management, and user engagement skills. You will deliver analysis on a variety of established and ad hoc topics, such as product safety, ports and borders enforcement and legal metrology. Ambition, fresh ideas in the development and use of data, and training in statistical and data science techniques are all actively encouraged! You will help OPSS become a data-led organisation, investigate new data sources and techniques, and champion the use of robust pipelines to deliver reproducible outputs.
Key Responsibilities
- Working with the Senior Team members in supporting a wide range of high-profile analytical projects.
- Leading on a small number of projects; handling partners and ensuring evidence is efficiently fed into operational policies and reports.
- Deliver data science solutions by applying your skills to a variety of product safety datasets.
- Harness the benefits of an internal cloud-based platform to develop analysis, statistical and machine learning models, host interactive visualisations, and collaborate with Git. Applying meticulous Quality Assurance, documentation and Reproducible Analytical Pipeline principles to both your own work and others’.
- Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques on structured and unstructured data sets to extract information and create predictive models.
- Supporting the wider office in analytical requests, being a source of expertise on the most appropriate data sources and statistical techniques to apply to ad hoc and longer-term projects.
- Develop both your own and wider coding and data science capability across the department through training and community events
Government Statistical Service:
Applicants who are not already members of the Government Statistician Group (GSG) will be required to do an online statistical test and a dissemination exercise as part of the application process to join the GSG.
Once you have submitted your application and the application has closed, you will be emailed during standard working hours inviting you to complete the GSS online multiple-choice test. This is a timed test and must be completed within 48 hours for you to be considered for the next stage of the process. You are encouraged to try the test attached to the advert before attempting the real test. Please ensure you inform us ahead of the test if you require any reasonable adjustments to be considered.
Please note: If you are already a member of the GSG, you are exempt from sitting the online test. To prevent your application being rejected please email dbtrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as you apply to notify us. Once confirmed you will be moved onto the next stage by our recruitment team.
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- From the Government Statistician Group competency framework:
- Presenting and Disseminating Data Effectively
- Acquiring Data/Understanding Customer Needs
- Data Analysis
https://gss.civilservice.gov.uk/policy-store/competency-framework-for-the-government-statistician-group-gsg/
Government Operational Research Service:
For GORS candidates, in the interview you will be asked to complete a problem structuring exercise.
The purpose of this exercise is to assess how you:
- approach problems
- produce and communicate workable ideas
- structure and plan an analytical project
You have 45 minutes to prepare a 5-minute presentation and 10 mins of follow up questions. You must not prepare visual aids, but you can make your own handwritten notes. You should explain your answers clearly but can assume some technical knowledge of your assessors.
http://www.operational-research.gov.uk/recruitment/competencies/