Senior Data Scientist (Privacy & Security Controls)

Description

Do you want to apply data science to one of the most important challenges in health research: enabling safe use of sensitive data at scale

In this roleyoulldevelop privacy and security controls that protect participants while helping researchers generate insights fasterand moresafely.

Our Future Healthis an ambitious collaboration between the public charity and private sectors designed tohelp people live healthier lives for longer through better prevention earlierdetectionand improved treatment of diseases. We will speed up the discovery of new methods of early disease detection and the evaluation of new diagnostic tools to helpidentifyand treat diseases earlywhen outcomes are usually better. With over 2.5M volunteers across the UKwerenow the worlds biggest health researchprogrammeof its kind and our volunteer group is also more diverse than other similar health researchprogrammes.

Technology and data are central to our systems power web sites clinics across the UKsecureanalyticsand researchsystemspipelines thatprocesshighly sensitivehealthand geneticdata and we are continuing to grow ourdata science capability to support this ambition.

To realise our ambition safely we need to continue developing world-class approaches to data privacy datasecurityand responsible access to health data. We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist specialising in privacysecurityand risk modelling to help designbuildand scale data-driven controls that protect participants while enablingcutting-edgeresearch.

This is a hands-on role whereyoullapply strong data science skills and an engineering mindset to real operational problems: safe outputs review re-identification risk privacy risks in trained models synthetic data and data-driven security controls. You will work closely with teams across Product Security Engineering Science Data Protection and Researcher Operations as well as external experts to develop practicalscalableand evidence-based solutions.

You will be expected to work closely with users of these systems including researchers Airlock reviewers access governancereviewersand security specialists to understand their workflows painpointsand risk decisions. A key part of the role will be turning complex privacy and security problems into trusted algorithmsevidenceand automated support.

Whatyoulldo

• Develop data-driven approaches to disclosure control and safe outputs review supporting the scaling of our TRE (Trusted Research Environment) Airlock. This may include building algorithms and automated review tools to classify outputs detect potentially disclosive contentidentifypatterns of risk and provide explainable decision support for human reviewers.
• Work directly with Airlock reviewers and operational users to understand where automation can help where human judgement is essential and how tools should be designed to support consistentauditableand proportionate decisions.
• Contribute to our approach to de-identification and re-identification risk assessment helping us assess how privacy risk changes across datasets accessmodelsand analytical outputs.
• Help us develop our approaches to safe AI using health data including how we assess and manage privacy risks associated with trained models.
• Explore and develop approaches to synthetic data generation assessing how synthetic data can be used safely and usefully and how to evaluate the privacyfidelityand utility trade-offs of different approaches.
• Collaborate with our Information Security team on data-driven security control assessment threatdetectionand monitoring approaches including identifying signals of risky behaviour anomalous activity or misuse of data access environments and cyber risk quantification.
• Build prototypes and production-quality code working with engineers to turn promising approaches into robustmaintainableand auditable tools.
• Work closely with governance legal ethics and operational colleagues to ensure technical controls fulfil their requirements.
• Keep up with emerging methods in statistical disclosure control privacy-enhancing technologies AI security synthetic data de-identificationand privacy-preserving computation.

This role will be fully hybrid with the expectation we get together in our Holborn London office at least once per month.

Requirements

We welcome applications from all who may not feel they match the full criteria so if you have most of the belowwedlike to hear from you:

• Significant experienceapplying data science machine learning statisticalmodellingor advanced analytics to complex real-world datasets.
• Strong applied statisticalexpertise including the ability to quantify risk and uncertainty evaluate assumptions design validation approaches interpret imperfect or incomplete evidence and communicate the limitations of statistical or machine learning models.
• Strong Python skills and experience writing maintainable production-quality code.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams with software engineers dataengineersor platform teams to design and deliver data products pipelines analyticalservicesor decision-support tools.
• A user-focused approach to technical delivery: you are comfortable working with people whooperate review govern or depend on data systems and can translate their needs into technical requirements.
• Applied machine learning experience and understanding of common privacy attacks against data and models such as memorisation membership inference attribute inference modelinversionor leakage through model outputs.
• Exposure to privacy-preserving machine learning privacy-enhancingtechnologiesor adjacent research areas (e.g. federated learning secure aggregation differential privacy or confidential computing)
• Experience working with sensitiveconfidentialor regulated data and a strong understanding of privacyconfidentialityor information security risks.
• Ability to translate ambiguous operational governance or security problems into clear data science questions and practical technical requirements.
• Good communicationskills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-specialist stakeholders.
• A pragmatic delivery-focused mindset

It would be a bonus if you have any of the following experience -

• Working with health data or biomedical research data electronic health records and ideally genomic data.
• Developing models algorithms or rule-based systems that support human decision-making ideally where explainability auditability and risk management are important.
• Anomaly detection behavioural analytics securitymonitoringor detection engineering.
• Risk quantification methods from fields such as actuarial science epidemiology operational researchorcyber risk.
• Familiarity with UK data protection researchgovernanceor health data access expectations.
• Experience with PETs or privacy-preserving ML frameworks such as FlowerOpacus TensorFlow Federated or similar.
• Cloud platforms containerisation CI/CDMLOpsor production ML systems.
• Experience evaluating synthetic data using both utility and privacy metrics.

Hiring Process

We feelhiring should be transparentand give you arealsensefor whatOur Future Healthis canexpect:

• Initial chatwith our Talent team (30 min)to get to know each other discuss the role and answer any questionsyou have.
• 1stinterviewwith ourHead of Data Operations(25min)- this is an opportunity to meet your potential line manager andfor you both toalign on role expectations.
• Technicalinterviewwith2-3members from our tech and datateams (60min).This will include ashorttaskyoullneed to prepare in advance of the interview and is designed to get a sense for howyoudapproach the real-world responsibilities of this role.
• Final stage competency interview (60 min)with a small cross-functional panel of your potential new stakeholders. This willfocus on how you collaborate work with stakeholders and navigate ambiguity and challenges in real-world projects.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary from 80000
• Generous Pension Scheme We invest in your future with employer contributions of up to 12%
• 30 Days Holiday pro rata Bank Holidays Enjoy a generous holiday allowance with the flexibility to take bank holidays when it suits you
• Enhanced Parental Leave Supporting you during lifes biggest moments
• Cycle to Work Scheme Save 25-39% on a new bike and accessories through salary sacrifice
• Home & Tech Savings Get up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products spreading the cost over 12 months through salary sacrifice
• EV Scheme Save up to 40% on abrand newelectric vehicle all-inclusive package through salary sacrifice
• 1000 Employee Referral Bonus Know someone amazing Get rewarded for bringing them on board!
• Wellbeing Support Access to Mental Health First Aiders plus 24/7 online GP services and an Employee AssistanceProgrammefor you and your family
• A Great Place to Work We have a lovely Central London office in Holborn and offer flexible and remote working arrangements

Join us -letsprevent disease together.

We recommend you apply as soon as possible as occasionally due to high volumes ofapplicationswe need to close our postings early.

At Our Future Health werecognisethe importance of having a diverse workforce and ensuring that all candidates regardless of their background haveequitableaccess to our application process. We proactively encourage applicants who identify as havinga disability neurodiversity or long-term health conditions to let us know if theyrequireany reasonable adjustments as part of their application process.

If you dorequireany reasonable adjustments please email us at

Required Experience:

Senior IC

Employment Type : Full Time
Experience: years
Vacancy: 1