About the job

Job summary

Senior Epidemiology Scientist

Salary & Grade : Grade 7, £51,824 - £61,414 (National)

Location: UKHSA Nottingham, NG2 4LA or UKHSA Birmingham B2 4BH, Hybrid working

Type and term of contract: Permanent Contract

 

As a Senior Epidemiology Scientist, you will support the field epidemiology response to the health protection threats across the Midlands and nationally. You will help lead a diverse regional team, working closely with colleagues to provide senior epidemiological support across a number of topic areas.

This post will provide senior scientific support to the epidemiological investigation of incidents and outbreaks of infectious diseases, supporting local Health Protection Teams and in collaboration with other partners. This will include leading and managing the technical and analytical aspects of epidemiological outbreak investigations and routine surveillance activities, and leading and supporting a team in carrying out these tasks.

The interface with local, regional and national colleagues, as well as with external stakeholders, will be an important feature of this role, including building and maintaining strong relationships with colleagues across the National Infection Service and wider PHE and external colleagues including the NHS, local authorities and academia.

The successful candidate will also take a lead role in public health scientific analyses and writing reports on specific projects, regular and ad hoc publications and peer reviewed publications. 

(Please note that this role can be based at either the UKHSA Birmingham OR Nottingham office).

 

Location

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) operates a hybrid working model where business needs allow.  This provides us with greater flexibility about how and where we work, to get the best from our workforce. As a hybrid worker, you will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of your contractual working hours (approximately 3 days a week pro rata, (averaged over a month) working at one of UKHSA's locations (Birmingham OR Nottingham).  Specialist or regional roles will be based at the appropriate UKHSA site. For certain roles, some additional flexibility may be possible, which will be agreed upon with the hiring manager based on individual requirements and business needs.

This role will be based from either the UKHSA Nottingham office or UKHSA Birmingham office. Please state your preferred location within your application.

*Please be aware that this role can only be worked from within the UK and not overseas. Relocation expenses are not available.* 

 

Job description

As the Senior Epidemiology Scientist your main responsibilities will include:

Surveillance and Data Analysis

• Identify surveillance needs within given lead areas (including horizon scanning), create surveillance system specifications, conduct complex statistical analyses and interpret surveillance data, making appropriate recommendations, and translating it in to public health action, develop automated routines and solutions and supervise / assure on the preparation, quality and delivery of routine and ad hoc surveillance reports
• Responsible for planning, implementing and maintaining a high level of surveillance and high quality epidemiology to meet local and regional needs, providing expert technical advice to PH practitioners on the design, analysis and interpretation of surveillance databases and data whilst assessing the current and future political /economic /scientific /technological /legal /environmental influences on team work

 

Outbreak Support and Epidemiological Investigations

• Lead and manage the technical and analytical aspects of epidemiological outbreak investigations including advising on study design, writing protocols for analytical studies, overseeing questionnaire design and study database development, training interviewers, preparing outbreak reports and supervising and supporting investigations into exceedances

 

Strategic Thinking and Partnership Working

• Build and maintain effective relationships with key stakeholders and partners across the National Infection Service, wider UKHSA and NHS colleagues at regional/local level as appropriate to role.

• Manage at times, challenging and/or conflicting subject matter problems in day to day work load referring/escalating to as appropriate.

 

Audit, Quality and Governance

• Evaluate existing surveillance systems (acting on results) and the acute response to incidents and outbreak, ensuring that it is used to improve standards and consistency across the team, evaluate teaching sessions and undertake and supervise audits as part of the team audit programme.

 

Research

• Identify research questions, project manage a research study, analyse datasets with appropriate methodology to answer research questions, and translate results into public health action.

 

Management and Leadership

• To be a visible, positive and competent role model and motivator, monitoring team professional standards. Adopt a senior leadership role for scientists within Field Epidemiology and represent Field Service at PHE and external scientific fora.
• Effective line management of staff (if applicable) to ensure flexibility and capacity to meet the team’s needs.
• Teach colleagues and stakeholders on surveillance and epidemiology, supporting ongoing training activities within the department, develop teaching material and courses, assess teaching requirements of team and colleagues and supervise MSc and other short term team attachments.

 

The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The Job holder is expected to accept reasonable alterations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary.

Person specification

Essential

• Completion of the Field Epidemiology Training Programme or equivalent training and experience
• Demonstrable experience of public health, health protection or epidemiology including epidemiology for outbreak investigations
• Experience of teaching epidemiology and/or surveillance and able to facilitate a learning culture
• Able to build and maintain effective relationships with co-workers and key stakeholders, negotiate with senior stakeholders on difficult and controversial issues, and present complex and sensitive information to large and influential groups
• Proficient and/or expert in common statistical/ database/mapping tools such as Stata, R, GIS, network analysis, SQL, etc.
• Ability to make decisions autonomously, engender trust and confidence and demonstrate integrity in the provision of advice and support whilst working to tight and often changing timescales

 

Desirable

• PhD or equivalent publication record in relevant subject
• Experience of research activities with a suitable publication record (3+ papers including 1+ first author) and grant writing experience
• Experience of using advanced epidemiological and statistical software packages

 

Please see the full specification in the job description.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £51,824, UK Health Security Agency contributes £13,922 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

STAGE 1 - APPLICATION & SIFT: 

You will be required to complete an application form. This will be assessed in line with the full list of essential criteria as detailed in the attached job description – please do provide evidence of how you meet this. 

If you are successful at this stage, you will progress to an interview.

STAGE 2 – INTERVIEW 

This post will involve an interview by video. 

As part of the process, candidates will be invited to interview which will involve an in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence in relation to the criteria set out in the Person Specification.  Candidates will also be asked to participate in a session where they will be required to prepare and deliver a 5-minute presentation to the panel.  This will be followed by a question-and-answer segment.  The presentation will be designed to assess each candidate’s experience in line with the requirements of the role.  Full details will be provided prior to the interview.

Expected Timeline:

Advert close: 23:55hrs on 14th January 2024 – unfortunately, late applications will not be considered. Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Shortlist: w/c 15th January 2024

Interviews: TBC

Please note these dates could be subject to change.  

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.