Senior Data Manager

We are hiring a Senior Data Manager for our growing data team. It’s a role with an inspiring set of data challenges, for what will eventually be a comprehensive view of the health of 5 million people in the UK, including directly gathered information, genetics, NHS records and other linked data.  As a Senior Data Manager, you will work collaboratively with data scientists, engineers, and software architects to manage the secure flow of data sets that contain the most detailed picture of human health.

In your role, you will ensure that Our Future Health’s participants’ data is kept safe whilst maximising its usefulness to researchers. This consists of managing data-related processes and the Airlock, the mechanism that researchers use to import or release material (data, statistical results, software, and tools) to and from our Trusted Research Environment. Running our Airlock in a secure and efficient manner is key to protecting the privacy of participants and helps us achieve our mission by enabling research findings to be disseminated quickly. The Airlock is relatively new, and the Senior Data Manager will be responsible for maturing and scaling the service through automating or contracting out particular steps, and proactively keeping up to date with technical advances in this sector.

Throughout, your role will ensure the best outcomes for researchers and participants alike, bringing analytical expertise, experience in governance and data security, and great communication skills to manage and support all elements of our Airlock service to the highest standards. As our work develops there will be other processes that need creating. You will use your expertise and experience in data stewardship and governance to contribute to the wider work of the team; for example, by helping to establish and operationalise efficient, accurate and resilient transfers of sensitive health data and enabling the use of health data across the world by providing the right information to researchers.

This is a varied and hands-on role. Due to the innovative nature of our work, you will often encounter situations that the organisation hasn’t dealt with before, and you’ll be part of the team that thinks through how we design our systems and processes in a way that protects the privacy of our participants, results in high quality data, and is scalable.  You’ll be working in multi-disciplinary teams to ensure that approaches are implementable while meeting the requirements of our governance, data protection, and information security teams. While you’ll often be solving problems for the first time, it’s important for this role to write down the systems and processes you’re creating, so that they be made clear to everyone and can be followed.

Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases. We are a charity, supported by the UK Government, in partnership with charities and industry. We work closely with the NHS and with public authorities across all nations and regions of the UK.

Our plan is to bring together 5 million volunteers from right across the UK who will be asked to contribute information to help build one of the most detailed pictures we have ever had of people’s health. Researchers will be able to use this information to make new discoveries about human health and diseases. So future generations can live in good health for longer.

What you’ll be doing

In this role, you will work in a team of data managers who support each other and collaborate to achieve a range of objectives across data management. Supported by this team, your key responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

Airlock Management:

• Establish and run an effective and timely Airlock service to facilitate import and release of statistical outputs and other materials in line with our disclosure control approach
• Provide leadership on scaling and maturing the Airlock service, keeping up to date with technological developments and the use of similar services across other organisations and sectors  
• Support researchers to use the Airlock service efficiently by assessing their requests, providing feedback and advising on strategies to reduce disclosure risks  
• Establish, train, and manage an expert group to support decisions on novel or difficult requests.
• Work with relevant subject matter experts or champions across Our Future Health and the relevant Boards to help advise on issues related to the Airlock service

Data Management:

• Manage some processes relating to the data lifecycle within a squad: working with data suppliers to schedule and monitor the timely supply of data in line with data sharing agreements and service level agreements, tracking and improving the quality of data, and overseeing the destruction of data when required
• Be a first port of call for questions from research groups about data provenance, definition, quality and documentation
• Facilitate the development of policies, processes and technical solutions to meet internal requirements relating to technology, data protection, data governance and information security, as well as external requirements from data suppliers, working with a variety of stakeholders
• Work with squads to identify, report and investigate data quality issues, following agreed data quality incident processes where appropriate
• Contribute to relevant governance processes and structures within Our Future Health, including risk, assumption, issue and dependency management

We don't expect you to have experience of each point and we welcome a wide range of applicants, but working in a similar data-focussed position and being comfortable automating processes would be essential.

• Analytical skills and intuition, and in-depth practical understanding of statistical concepts
• Experience working with range of health and care data sets, such as administrative data, electronic medical records, genetics, or questionnaires
• Experience working closely with researchers in health, biomedical or clinical sciences
• Ability to evaluate the research outputs from a privacy or disclosure risk perspective
• Working knowledge of Python, sufficient to be able to interrogate the data to produce meaningful descriptive statistics
• Understanding and working knowledge of information governance and data security approaches appropriate for sensitive health data, ideally with experience of working within an ISO 27001 accredited environment
• Awareness of ethical and legal issues (and professional debates) relating to genetics/genomics, the handling and storage of human tissue, and access to personal and health data
• Ability to concisely summarise and explain complex scenarios in easy-to-understand terms
• Resilience and motivation to problem solve and have significant positive impact on complex or uncertain issues
• Ability to prioritise effectively and manage competing business demand and stakeholder expectations.
• Well-developed interpersonal skills and ability to communicate effectively with subject matter experts and people at all organisational levels.

• Salary banding £70,000 - 80,000
• Generous company pension package with employer contributions of up to 12%. 
• 30 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) 
• Continuous career development with regular appraisals and learning and development opportunities.
• A lovely new office in Holborn, Central London – we offer flexible and remote working arrangements. 

Join us - let’s prevent disease together.  

Applications for this role will close on Monday 24th of February