Principal Researcher (Data Science)

We are looking for a collaborative, entrepreneurial and ambitious Principal Researcher to join our Innovation Mapping team and work on our current projects, with a particular focus on our large-scale health innovation and EU innovation mapping projects, as well as helping us to develop new and exciting opportunities.

About Nesta

Nesta is a global innovation foundation. We back new ideas to tackle the big challenges of our time. Our mission is to spark and shape new ideas that improve how the world works for everyone. We use our knowledge, networks, funding and skills - working in partnership with others, including governments, businesses and charities. We are a UK charity but work all over the world, supported by a financial endowment.

About the role

Mapping the places and networks where innovation happens is a necessary step towards understanding and supporting it effectively, and today's big economic and technological challenges make this mapping more important than ever. Nesta's Innovation Mapping team is at the forefront of research, development and application in this area and some examples of our work include Arloesiadur, a path-breaking innovation dashboard for the Welsh Government, and projects to map innovation in the EU and the UAE, and health innovation globally together with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation in the USA.

We are also beginning to leave an academic footprint with our research and, through this work, we want to transform innovation policy and practice, making them faster, better and smarter, and shed light on innovation phenomena that have until now remained poorly understood for lack of data.

This exciting new role will help us to achieve our goals and will see our successful candidate analyse relevant data using data science methods such as supervised and unsupervised machine learning and natural language processing techniques. You will also help to ensure that the team stays at the cutting edge of the field by identifying relevant research questions and addressing them with data science methods.

The diversity of our projects and the interesting datasets that we work with make this role such an enticing opportunity. Working at Nesta also means being an integral part of our highly collaborative work culture, which will see you e xploring opportunities to apply new data science techniques and communicating findings through conference and peer reviewed papers, research notes, blogs, data visualisations and open source software. Participating in the development of new research proposals for funders, including the UK Research Councils, is key. Plus, you can develop further your skillset as opportunities for mentoring, peer learning and project learning time with new methods and interesting data sources will also be made available.

To secure this opportunity

You will hold a PhD qualification in a relevant quantitative discipline (e.g. data science, computer science, statistics or operations research), although candidates with an excellent master's degree in a relevant subject will be considered if they also have relevant professional experience. You must have strong quantitative data processing and analysis skills, plus demonstrable expertise in data science-relevant programming languages, specifically Python or R.

An outstanding communicator, with a proven ability to present research findings in a credible and compelling way, you must be a target and performance-driven individual with an adaptable, collaborative and flexible approach to your work.