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Job summary

Main area
Lead Data Scientist
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 8b
Contract
12 months (12 months Fixed Term Contract)
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
455-NLFT-0404
Employer
North London NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
St Anns Hospital
Town
Haringey
Salary
£70,396 - £80,837 Per annum including HCAS
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
21/09/2025 23:59

Employer heading

North London NHS Foundation Trust logo

Lead Data Scientist

NHS AfC: Band 8b

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we: 

  • Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
  • Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
  • Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
  • Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
  • Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
  • Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer.  We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is:  https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/ 

Job overview

The role of Lead Data Scientist is a new role that will work across North London Foundation Trust and the postholder will play a key role in leading on the development of a new data science function that will contribute to the delivery of the NLFT Digital Strategy. 

The postholder will be responsible for the design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance of machine learning and artificial intelligence models that will be trained on data held in the Partnership’s Microsoft Azure data platform. The post-holder will take a lead in the exploratory development of Generative AI models that will include close working with industry and academic partners to develop small and large language models that will underpin transformed clinical and operational delivery across all sites and divisions. 

This post holder will provide line management of embedded data science graduate placements and will provide a key conduit to academic and industry partners. 

The postholder will foster strong relationships with clinical, operation and administrative leadership to understand their requirements and to translate these into high-impact AI use cases and solutions.  

Main duties of the job

Lead on the development of machine learning, time series forecasting, generative AI and other data science models and solutions. 

Lead on AI model creation, implementation and monitoring using the Partnership’s cloud data platform. The role will involve the detailed analysis and understanding of complex technical and business requirements across multiple services across the Partnerships the Trust to deliver high quality products and facilitate their delivery into business-as-usual operation. 

Contribute to developing and delivery long-term strategic goals for data science architecture vision and standards in conjunction with internal and external stakeholders. 

Working in partnership with the wider Digital Team to create strategies and plans for data capacity planning, data security, life cycle data management, scalability, backup, disaster recovery, business continuity and archiving. 

 

 

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:  

  1.  We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
  2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
  3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

Why NLFT?

  • We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
  • We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
  • NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
  • Excellent internal staff network

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Responsible to carry out regular reviews of the Partnership’s Microsoft Synapse/Azure data platform to ensure the Partnership’s data science architecture is up to date with the latest industry standards and enables rapid AI model development utilising the latest technological platform frameworks.  

Responsible for building data modelling processes and entities that will facilitate the Trust accelerating the use of AI capability to enable patient outcome improvement and productivity gains. Technical development and maintenance will be required across any of these areas and therefore this role requires a breadth and depth of technical knowledge to support this complex environment. 

Person specification

Education & Qualification

Essential criteria
  • Educated to Master’s level in data science or healthcare engineering. Or, equivalent level of experience of working at a senior level in data science role(s) within healthcare and/or life sciences organisations. BSc degree in a technical discipline (computer science, mathematics, engineering)
Desirable criteria
  • Microsoft certification for Azure and Azure AI and Databricks certification

Skills/Abilities

Essential criteria
  • Skilled in writing code in Python and/or R  Advanced machine learning model building skills Advanced programming skills - including SQL Server for querying databases and extracting information.  Skilled in developing across the breadth of the modern data stack - specifically data ingestion, transformation and data layer delivery  Experience of developing in a cloud-based environment  Experience of Azure and  Power BI development Extremely numerate/logical and able to analyse and interpret data and information accurately and effectively  Sound knowledge and skills in the use of relevant statistical/mathematical techniques  Advanced knowledge and skills in the practical applications of all MS Office products

Experience /Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • In-depth specialist knowledge of healthcare and life sciences data science and AI development and application. Experience working with Microsoft Azure technologies  Extensive experience of performing complex information analysis to support decision making  In depth knowledge of current IT development tools and methodologies (programming; relational database design)  Strong experience of effectively liaising with stakeholders   Proven ability to design and manage projects  Experience of cloud data warehouse design and build.
Desirable criteria
  • Knowledge and experience of using the Databricks platform Knowledge and experience of Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Devops and Git.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

NHS Pastoral Care Quality AwardVeteran AwareApprenticeships logoNo smoking policyPositive about disabled peopleJob share policyAge positiveImproving working livesCare quality commission - GoodArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerCare Leaver CovenantStonewall equality policy. Equality and justice for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people.Step into healthAccredited Living Wage Employer

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Jayshree Pindoriya
Job title
Head of Data & Management Information Systems
Email address
[email protected]
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