Lead Data Scientist

The Grade 6 Lead Security Data Scientist is responsible for the strategic direction, capability, and impact of DWP's Security Data Science team. This means owning the team's vision, setting technical standards, and ensuring the team's work is tightly aligned to DWP's security objectives: not just delivering machine learning, AI, and analytics, but making the case for data science at senior levels across the Cyber Resilience Centre and its parent group, the Security & Data Protection (S&DP) directorate. This is primarily a leadership role. Day-to-day you will be setting direction, developing people, and maintaining the stakeholder relationships that generate valuable work. You will also contribute technically: reviewing and shaping methodology, making sound judgements on complex problems, and remaining close enough to the work to credibly develop others. Expect around 20% of your time to be spent on direct technical contribution. The right candidate is a strong practitioner who has grown into leadership: someone with a track record of taking data science or security analytics workstreams from R&D through to production, and who now gets more satisfaction from building a team's capability than from solving problems alone., Leadership and strategy

• Set the strategic direction for Security Data Science within DWP, ensuring the work of the team advances the organisation's security objectives.
• Own the team's delivery standards, defining what good looks like across methodology, tooling, and outputs, and holding the team to it.
• Drive resourcing decisions, ensuring the right skills mix across data science, AI engineering, performance analysis, and other roles.
People and capability
• Act as a player coach and technical mentor, inspiring curiosity and creativity in team members and supporting their professional development.
• Own the team's professional development: running learning programmes, identifying skill gaps, and evaluating emerging techniques and tooling for adoption in the DWP security context.
Stakeholders and partnerships
• Build peer and senior relationships across the business, including security operations and policy, to create a pipeline of valuable work for the team to deliver.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with data science peers across DWP and with adjacent technical communities within CRC and S&DP including data engineers, performance analysts, and security architects, encouraging collaboration, reuse, and avoiding duplication of effort.
• Represent DWP Security Data Science externally, including at cross-government forums and with bodies such as NCSC, GC3, and other government departments, to share expertise and shape the wider community of practice.
Technical delivery
• Directly manage the quality and consistency of machine learning, AI, and analytics-driven initiatives that deliver critical strategic security objectives.
• Define and lead initiatives to provide appropriate platforms that support modern Data Science workflows, integrated directly into automated security pipelines.
• Take responsibility for the full product delivery lifecycle of analytics capabilities, including overseeing discovery, development, deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and continual improvement of live capabilities.
• Champion user research within the team, designing and managing processes to understand the needs of operational analysts, SOC teams, and other internal users to ensure data science products deliver real impact.
Develop and own the Security Data Science ethical framework, overseeing compliance with data ethics standards and legislation, developing a data ethics culture within the team, and ensuring ethics is applied appropriately across all analytics capabilities and programmes., We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
• Leadership
• Making Effective Decisions
• Changing and Improving
Technical skills We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
• Cyber Security
• Data Science
• Artificial Intelligence, To help you prepare and settle into the interview you will be sent the behaviour questions in advance along with details of the Interview location. These questions should be treated as confidential. The interview panel may ask you other questions which will not be shared in advance, including follow-up questions, and those about your experience, abilities, strengths.
Candidates will be asked further probing questions to determine suitability for the role., Civil Servants applying on promotion will usually be appointed to the salary minimum or within 10% of existing salary. Any move to DWP from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may, however, be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at the Childcare Choices Website. Feedback Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment. Security Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (opens in a new window) . See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) . 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. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy. Diversity and Inclusion The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) . Apply and further information This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative. The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window) .


• A strong practitioner background in data science or machine learning, with in-depth knowledge of at least one specialism (e.g. NLP, graph analytics, time-series modelling, deep learning) and the ability to make sound technical judgements across the full stack.
• Proven ability to lead, grow and develop high-performing technical teams, including setting technical direction, managing performance, and building capability in others.
• Experience of building AI applications, including Retrieval Augmented Generation, prompt engineering, observability and evaluation.
• Excellent stakeholder management with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences and build momentum for change at senior levels.
• Experience of strategy and delivery in a large public or private sector organisation, with a track record of taking data science workstreams from conception through to production.
• Expertise in cyber security data science, including ML-based detection, anomaly detection, or behavioural analytics capabilities in a security or fraud context., Data science innovation: a recognised leader in the data science space; demonstrates in-depth knowledge of AI and machine learning techniques and applies them creatively to security problems; acts as a coach inspiring curiosity in others; keeps pace with developments in the field and identifies opportunities to apply them in the DWP security context.
• Developing data science capability: sets the direction of continuous professional development within the team; demonstrates in-depth understanding of a wide range of techniques including supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, LLMs, anomaly detection, and graph analytics with detailed knowledge of at least one specialism; matches emerging developments to opportunities in the organisation.
• Delivering business impact: champions the role of data science within CRC and S&DP; takes responsibility for delivering scalable analytics capabilities into the organisation and establishing maintenance support; identifies and creates opportunities to develop products that support organisational security objectives.
• Understanding product delivery: leads the team through all phases of the product delivery lifecycle; sets how the team should use and adapt delivery methods such as Agile; collaborates with stakeholders to influence direction. Oversees compliance with data ethics standards and legislation across the team's work andensures data science products are monitored, maintained, and continually improved after deployment.
The following are desirable but not essential:
• Experience of strategy and delivery in a large public or private sector organisation, with a track record of taking data science workstreams from conception through to production.
• Expertise in cyber security data science, including ML-based detection, anomaly detection, or behavioural analytics capabilities in a security or fraud context.
• Postgraduate qualification in a quantitative discipline (data science, statistics, computer science, mathematics, or similar).
• Professional security certification such as GIAC, GMON, or equivalent., This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
  
  The DWP Cyber Resilience Centre (CRC) offers a uniquely challenging and fulfilling opportunity for people interested in making a genuine difference to society.
The CRC is an innovative and responsive operation delivering a range of services to help DWP protect, monitor and respond to malicious behaviour or activity and threats to, or compromises of, financial and personal data assets. About the team: Within the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP), the Security Data Science team is part of the Cyber Resilience Centre (CRC), protecting one of the largest repositories of personal data in the UK and securing public-facing payment services used by millions of citizens. Data science is central to how we detect and respond to the threats the department faces. The team of 10 data scientists and performance analysts build capabilities that span machine learning, AI, analytics, and automation to keep DWPs systems and citizens safe.

Alongside your salary of 75,026, Department for Work and Pensions contributes 21,735 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window). DWP have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:
• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave at least 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (prorata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
• Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
• Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 years continuous service.
• Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Womens Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.
• DWP Employee Benefits: Discover what we offer
Things you need to know Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use., If you are placed on a reserve list but we cannot immediately offer you a post, please note:
• If you are later offered the role you applied for, in a location you have expressed a preference for, and you decline the offer or are unable to take up the post within a reasonable timeframe you will be withdrawn from the campaign and removed from the reserve list, other than in exceptional circumstances (e.g. a contractual Part Time Working Pattern cannot be accommodated in the initial role offered or in cases of serious ill health).
• If DWP makes an offer of an alternative role or location to that which you originally applied for, and you decline that offer, you will be able to remain on the reserve list.
Disability Confident Scheme If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards. Reasonable Adjustments We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia. If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should contact the Government Recruitment Service via DWPRecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs. Complete the Reasonable Adjustments section in the Additional requirements page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if youre deaf, a Language Service Professional. If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section. Integrity, plagiarism, Civil Service Principles and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. Examples of plagiarism can include:
• Presenting the work, ideas and experience of others as your own
• Copying content or answers from an online or published source that is not your own
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.