Data Scientist

Overview

VE3 is seeking a Data Scientist to support the Public Health Agency (NI) in the development and maintenance of health data products and analytical outputs within the NI Health Analytics Platform (NIHAP). The role will focus primarily on developing dashboards, reports, applications, and reproducible analytical products using R within a secure Azure-based environment.

The successful candidate will work under the direction of senior PHA staff, contributing to data product delivery, documentation, release support, and collaboration with Data Engineers, analysts, and wider health data stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop data products including dashboards, reports, apps, and analytical outputs using R.
• Build and maintain solutions using tidyverse, RMarkdown, Quarto, and Shiny.
• Extract and process data from Azure Synapse and related databases using SQL.
• Deploy analytical products to Posit Connect.
• Contribute to and use internal PHA R packages and reusable code components.
• Work within PHA’s Jira Kanban workflow, updating tickets regularly and following client prioritisation.
• Attend daily 15-minute Teams stand-ups and collaborate closely with PHA and HSCDI colleagues.
• Support requirement gathering and stakeholder engagement with guidance from senior PHA staff.
• Occasionally present outputs and findings to wider health data consumers.
• Document datasets and data products in Purview and Confluence to support knowledge sharing.
• Work predominantly within the NIHAP production environment, with occasional testing support in other environments.
• Follow PHA deployment controls, governance processes, and cyber/information governance requirements.

Essentials Skills and Experience

• Strong hands-on experience as a Data Scientist aligned to the DDaT Data Scientist role level.
• Strong proficiency in R for analytical product development.
• Practical experience with tidyverse, RMarkdown, Quarto, and Shiny.
• Good working knowledge of SQL, including writing simple extraction and transformation queries.
• Experience deploying or supporting deployment of products via Posit Connect.
• Experience working in Azure-based data environments, ideally including Azure Synapse.
• Experience using Git/Azure Repos, pull requests, and code review practices.
• Familiarity with Reproducible Analytical Pipelines principles.
• Experience working in Agile/Kanban delivery teams using tools such as Jira.
• Strong documentation skills using platforms such as Confluence and metadata/cataloguing tools such as Purview.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, especially in multi-disciplinary data teams.
• Evidence of cyber security and information governance training, particularly relating to personal data.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Previous experience in healthcare, public health, or regulated public sector data environments.
• Experience supporting users through Teams support channels.
• Familiarity with Azure virtual machine architectures.
• Experience contributing to internal analytical libraries or shared code packages.
• Experience presenting data products to non-technical or mixed audiences.

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