Closing date: 26 September 2025
The roles provide a unique opportunity to work at a new national centre of excellence to help strengthen NHS cancer services and reduce variation in care. The roles are based at the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN) within the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU), jointly run by the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
These are key roles in data science and reporting in NATCAN, working closely with senior cancer specialists, clinical fellows, methodologists, data managers, and other multidisciplinary members. The post holders will develop advanced analysis and research skills. Having large detailed linked datasets provides opportunities to be involved in methodological development and in epidemiological studies assessing the quality of care and answering the most pressing questions about why some cancer patients receive different treatments and outcomes than others. The results of the work will be disseminated as audit reports, dashboards, peer-reviewed academic papers, and conference presentations. The post holders will also support developments to improve the efficiency of data analysis and reporting within the centre, working on the data flow into and within NATCAN, data validation, data science processes, automated reporting, state-of-the-art data visualisation and dashboards.
A current Data Scientist in NATCAN says “These data scientist roles provide a fantastic opportunity to be part of multidisciplinary teams carrying out clinical audit and research with ‘big data’. For this to drive quality improvement and make a real difference to patients, we need more input from data scientists to handle the data coming into NATCAN efficiently and analyse and report on it effectively. My role has been extremely well-supported from academics and clinicians at the forefront of their fields and has provided me with invaluable opportunities to develop my data science skills, present at national and international conferences, and contribute to meaningful improvements for patients with cancer. I cannot recommend this position highly enough.”
Responsibilities
- Carry out statistical analyses to:
- describe the cancer care and outcomes across different NHS organisations
- examine how different patterns of care may influence patient outcomes
- support quality improvement initiatives
- Extract, wrangle and curate large scale linked clinical datasets ready for analysis using SQL or statistical software
- Develop reusable data pipelines and apply algorithms to derive required variables
- Produce reports, dashboards and data visualisations to support local quality improvement
- Ensure projects comply with information governance policies
- Communicate findings in seminars, conference presentations, reports and academic journals
About you
We are looking for applicants with
- Bachelor Level/ Higher degree in medical statistics, data science, epidemiology, operational research or equivalent academic qualification
- A good understanding of health-related research methods and study designs
- Experience of undertaking analyses using large complex datasets in a statistical package
- Evidence of contributions to written output, preferably peer-reviewed
- Experience of applying information governance principles to health care data