Data Scientist

Salary: £35,116 to £37,174 with progression to £45,413 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 22 June 2025

The Role

We are looking for a talented individual with excellent technical skills to join our team of data scientists within the National Innovation Centre for Data ~(NICD). 

Join leading data scientists at the National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD), transferring ‘in demand’ data science skills into UK organisations. 

NICD has been established to address the data skills gap in the UK that will enable organisations to innovate through data. It delivers a flexible rolling programme of collaborative projects that focus on a specific business challenge or opportunity and transfers practical data skills into the workforce. Using these new skills, organisations can make better, data driven decisions, optimise existing operations and launch new products and services. 

You will be interested in working with a wide range of organisations (from SMEs and public sector through to Fortune 500 companies) on a wide range of interesting technical and business challenges, transferring data skills through tutoring and mentoring the client and exploring the latest challenges in AI and data projects. 

You will be responsible for working with client organisations to deliver technical projects that span a broad range of sectors as well as a variety of unique and intriguing technical and business challenges. Through the delivery of these technical projects, you will be responsible for transferring data skills to the client organisation’s staff, through tutoring and mentoring. 

You will be responsible for scoping project requirements, understanding business challenges and developing a project workstream to address this challenge through data science techniques. You will also explore technical data challenges in collaborative projects. 

You will succeed in this space if you have passion to challenge yourself and to continue to advance your skills through continued professional development. We are keen to hear form people who have a positive ‘can-do’ attitude and an enthusiastic approach to solving problems.

If this sounds like you, please apply by uploading a CV and letter of application that outlines how you can evidence the essential knowledge, skills and experience detailed in the job description.  

Reach out to Georgia Carr at georgia.carr@newcastle.ac.uk or Barry Hodgson at barry.hodgson@newcastle.ac.uk to have a chat about this opportunity.

If you are selected at the initial shortlisting stage, we will be asking you undertake a technical assessment, involving the analysis of a dataset to address a challenge posed by a hypothetical client. 

You will: 

• Communicate, mentor, and teach complex technical concepts to clients, with emphasis on transferring skills into their organisations
• Explore and deliver data science and AI related collaborative technical projects to deadline and to a high-standard
• Scope project requirements, understand business challenges and develop project workstreams to address client business challenges with data science

Key Accountabilities

This role is responsible for:

• Transferring skills to client organisations through one-to-one sessions of demonstrating, tutoring and mentoring
• Exploring and delivering NICD technical projects to clients
• Collaborating with clients to develop technical solutions to business problems
• Supporting and delivering project scoping sessions to scope client projects
• Providing advice and assistance to clients (& colleagues) in technical problem-solving
• Planning and delivering client project reviews, milestone reviews and results
• Presenting and communicating updates, including effective communication of complex/technical information
• Creating reports to summarise and explain technical information
• Teaching other staff members and colleagues
• Representing NICD and our work at national and international events
• Developing learning materials for activities/events that educate and support the NICD community
• Maintaining and developing your own knowledge through training and development activities
• Any other duties within the scope and general nature of the grade which may be required

The Person

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Relevant knowledge and proven experience in one or more of the following areas: Statistical Modelling, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Machine Vision, MLOps, Data Analytics, Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, Data Visualisatio
• Relevant knowledge and experience of cleaning, processing and modelling data using a scripting language e.g. with R or Python
• You must have proven previous experience of analysing a dataset to address a challenge or provide insights
• Experience delivering projects on time and to a high quality
• Successfully working and contributing as part of a team
• Excellent communication skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills (motivating, negotiating, influencing and being empathetic)
• Ability to manage own work, including planning and execution

Attributes and Behaviour 

Delivering Service

• Strive to exceed expectations of project collaborators, colleagues and stakeholders
• Demonstrates high energy and commitment to delivery

Finding Solutions

• Generates options and identifies appropriate course of action to address organisational and technical goals
• Encourages innovative thinking in self and others
• Makes decisions based on understanding the wider organisational needs 

Team Working 

• Operates in a number of different teams and groups across the organisation, confident in adopting a range of team roles
• Develops cross functional co-operation and support
• Builds alliances and relationships outside of the group

Understanding Others

• Understands individual or group motives, and the culture of wider organisation
• Quickly and effectively learn the methods and language used within other groups

Planning and Organising

• Works in a planned and structured way, using own and others’ time effectively
• Sets own priorities in conjunction with team and area objectives
• Quickly identifies what is important and prioritises accordingly whilst monitoring and controlling workflow of teams

Qualifications

• PhD in a related discipline or
• More than 2 years of experience applying your data science knowledge in a client-facing role

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.  As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society.  We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent.  We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silver  Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality.  We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC.  We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe. 

Requisition ID: 28112