Lead Data Scientist
Posted by: Ofqual
Employed By: Ofqual
Job Title: Lead Data Scientist
Salary: £51900 - £64491
Contract: Full-time
Location: Coventry
Application Deadline: 11 November 2025
Ofqual is the independent qualifications regulator for England. We currently regulate 200+ awarding organisations, and approx. 11,600 certified qualifications. These include GCSEs, AS and A levels, and a broad range of vocational and technical qualifications.
For more information about what we do please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofqual
About the team
We are looking to recruit a Lead Data Scientist to join our Data Analytics and Research team. The team works with a vision to consolidate and grow our statistics and data science capabilities.
Person Specification
As a Lead Data Scientist, you will have particular responsibility for building our capacity to extract insights from unstructured data, for example by applying techniques from natural language processing, machine learning and AI. You will also work on a range of other, structured-data based projects.
Research, analysis and data are at the heart of Ofqual’s approach to intelligent, evidence-based regulation. Our team plays a pivotal role in the evaluation of educational assessments and qualifications. The work we do strengthens our regulatory decision-making, identifying ways to support our position as a credible authority by adopting innovative, critical approaches to research and business intelligence.
Some recent examples of our work include the interactive visualisations found on our Ofqual Analytics site. We also regularly publish statistics which can be found on our Statistics at Ofqual site.
In this role, there will be opportunities for you to showcase your data science, stakeholder engagement and project management skills. You will collaborate with several teams within Ofqual, as well as external organisations.
We are looking for someone who has expert analytical ability in data science and data manipulation skills. It is essential that you have theoretical knowledge and practical experience applying a range of innovative techniques using Python and R, and in successfully introducing those innovations into the workplace.
You should be happy to work independently and as part of a team, comfortable managing projects, prioritising multiple strands of work, and meeting challenging timescales. This role requires someone who is a strong communicator, comfortable with numbers as well as ideas, enjoys learning and encouraging others in their own learning, and gives attention to quality and impact of their work.