Senior Data Scientist - ( Ref : 6886 )

Our Role

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.

• Recovering Nature– Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places– Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing– Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature– Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at:

Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK

The Role

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:

1. Mapping and Earth Observation – Spatial data and maps on natural capital to inform national and local decision making and delivery.
2. England Peat Map – Mapping the extent and condition of England’s peatlands.
3. Field data collection – Data on habitats, soils, landscapes and species to understand the condition of natural capital assets.
4. Citizen Science – Working with citizens and community science to fill gaps, provide local and landscape scale information and engaging the public.
5. 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.
6. Programme management – Managing Natural England’s NCEA programme.

Job description

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:
• o data extraction/ingestion and preparation, exploratory data analysis, and data visualisation
• o working with a range of large scale spatial and non-spatial data types in both structured and unstructured formats
• o experience working with (preferably combining) a range of biological, geographical and social data o experience of coding in Python and R,
• o knowledge of mathematics, statistics, and algorithms
• o experience in Machine Learning / Deep Learning applications o experience in GIS software (e.g. ArcPro, ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, QGIS)
• o knowledge of relevant data/metadata standards
• o understanding of good practice, ethics, and quality assurance for data analysis
• o 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

Benefits

At Natural England, we support a healthy work-life balance by offering full-time, part-time, and flexible working arrangements.

We provide excellent opportunities for career progression, training, and development tailored to your role. This includes ten days annually for personal learning and development, plus three additional days for volunteering.

You’ll receive a generous leave allowance of 25 days per year (pro rata), increasing by one day for each year of service up to 30 days (pro-rata), access to the Civil Service Pension scheme with a 28.97% employer contribution, and a range of benefits such as shopping discounts and a cycle-to-work scheme. Staff can also join the Civil Service Sport club for discounts on sports, leisure activities, and social events.

We are committed to fairness, equality, and inclusivity. Our employee-led diversity networks help foster a welcoming environment where everyone feels valued and supported.

Locations

Natural England has adopted hybrid working – which means our staff work from a flexible range of locations, encompassing home, offices (ours and our partners) and relevant sites. All new staff will be formally linked to one of our 25 offices across England, and the expectation is that all new staff will be able to access their local office to be part of the community of staff in their geographical area. Staff are expected to attend their associated office for 20% of their contractual hours.

Staff members are required to carry out all their duties working in this way and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time. Travel expenses will be paid if work-related travel is required but does not apply to travel between home and your associated office.

National team roles can be linked with any Natural England office while Area Team roles will be linked with an office in the relevant geographic area.

View a map of our office locations here: online map of Natural England office locations

Pay

It is Natural England policy to employ at the entry point of the salary range.

You will become an active member of the relevant local leadership community, the group of senior Natural England staff in each of the localities across England who we ask to provide support and co-ordination for the local group of staff.

Please note: Licensed visa sponsoring organisations are employers authorised by the government to recruit and sponsor overseas workers, enabling them to obtain the appropriate visa to work legally in the country. Natural England is NOT a licensed sponsorship employer.

As part of the Natural England’s application process, candidates are asked to confirm their right to work and remain in the UK. If a candidate says that they meet these requirements, ID is checked, a provisional offer of permanent employment is made and pre-employment eligibility checks commence. Only after these checks are candidates given firm offers of employment.

Natural England is unable to employ individuals who cannot provide the required evidence of their right to work.

How to Apply

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview. We now provide primary interview questions in advance for all formal recruitments.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We'll assess you against the competencies below during the selection process. Please be aware that we reserve the right for roles that receive a high volume of applications to initially sift applications for one competence only.

• Technical Skills & Knowledge

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your Action.

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering the Technical Skills & Knowledge competency.

Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all competencies as set out in the Job Description.

As with all roles in NE, these roles require office attendance of a minimum of 20% of the working time – one day per week for those who work full time, subject to any reasonable adjustments and/or existing contractual homeworking.

Competencies

Competence 1

Professional competency

Detail

Technical Skills and Knowledge

Description

Essential
• 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
Desirable
• 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

Competence 2

Professional competency

Detail

Leading and Managing People

Description

• 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)

Competence 3

Professional competency

Detail

Putting People at The Heart of The Environment

Description

• 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)

Competence 4

Professional competency

Detail

Personal Effectiveness

Description

• 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)

Contact information

Rach Tebbs: Rachel.tebbs@naturalengland.org.uk 07767 939214

Lydia Brunt: Lydia.brunt@naturalengland.org.uk 07760373733

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Job contact :

• Name : Rach Tebbs
• Email : Rachel.tebbs@naturalengland.org.uk
• Telephone : 07767 939214

Recruitment team

• Email : defra-recruitment-enquiries@resourcing.soprasteria.co.uk

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