Senior Data Scientist

Data Scientists at Made Tech help public sector organisations decide where data and AI can genuinely improve services, then design, build and evaluate solutions that work in practice.

Our work can include statistical analysis, machine learning, natural language processing, generative AI and agentic systems. Senior Data Scientists combine hands-on technical delivery with the judgement needed to work through ambiguity, communicate uncertainty and help clients make informed decisions.

Your role at Made Tech

At Made Tech we want to positively impact the future of the government by using technology to improve society, for everyone. We want to empower the public sector to deliver and continuously improve digital services that are user-centric, data-supported and freed from legacy technology. A key component of this is developing modern data systems that enable informed decision-making for our clients.
As a Senior Data Scientist, you will work closely with clients and multidisciplinary teams to understand problems, explore possible approaches and deliver useful outcomes. Depending on the project, you might:

• investigate a service or policy problem and identify how data science or AI could help;
• analyse complex or imperfect data and communicate what it can and cannot tell us;
• prototype, build and evaluate statistical, machine-learning or AI systems;
• design and evaluate systems using large language models, retrieval, tools or agentic workflows;
• establish appropriate boundaries between model-driven behaviour, deterministic software and human decision-making;
• develop evaluation approaches, test cases and measures of success;
• help turn experimental work into reliable, maintainable services;
• advise clients on the responsible and proportionate use of data and AI;
• support clients to develop their own data science capability.
  

As a Data Scientist, you may play one or more roles according to our clients' needs. You could be working closely with clients to help shape their data strategy alongside our data engineers. At other times the role can be very hands-on, and you'll serve in a senior contributor role to projects, focusing on both delivering data science solutions and upskilling members of the client team. Sometimes, you might have to play the role of an advisor, suggesting to clients how data science is done and helping them set up their data science environment. At other times you will be working with the other members of data engineering teams and performing exploratory data analysis.

As a senior member of the data capability within Made Tech, you will also participate in our hiring process and continued development of the team, as well as representing us both internally to the organisation and publicly. You may also line manage members of the team up to the mid-level.

You’ll need to have a drive to deliver outcomes for users. You’ll need to be comfortable sharing your knowledge and skills with others. We'd love to hear some examples of times you’ve mentored, coached, and contributed to the growth of team members. Maybe you’ve written some blog posts about your discipline, or perhaps even delivered a talk or two that you’d like to share.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

We are looking for experienced data scientists who can contribute effectively to complex client delivery from the outset. You should have a track record of applying data science, machine learning or AI to real problems, and the technical judgement to choose, implement and evaluate appropriate approaches with a high degree of independence.

We don't require experience with a particular cloud service, library or AI framework. We are more interested in the depth of your experience, the quality of your decisions and your ability to learn unfamiliar technologies when a project requires them.

We look for evidence of the following capabilities. You don't need to have encountered every type of problem or technology listed below.

• Applying data science, machine learning or AI to real problems and delivering useful outcomes.
• Framing ambiguous problems, identifying what evidence is needed and defining appropriate measures of success.
• Selecting methods based on the problem, available data, assumptions, risks and delivery context.
• Understanding statistical and machine-learning approaches well enough to use them appropriately, interpret their outputs and recognise their limitations.
• Establishing useful baselines and comparing complex approaches with simpler alternatives.
• Working confidently in Python and following good software development practices, including version control, testing, code review and reproducible development.
• Exploring, cleaning and assessing data, including identifying limitations, quality problems and potential sources of bias.
• Implementing robust evaluations using appropriate metrics, test cases, error analysis and qualitative investigation.
• Considering performance beyond aggregate accuracy, including reliability, uncertainty, fairness, security, cost and the consequences of failure.
• Developing or evaluating AI systems built around large language models, such as systems using structured outputs, retrieval, tool use or agentic workflows.
• Working with data engineers and software engineers to integrate data science or AI components into maintainable services.
• Communicating technical findings, uncertainty and trade-offs clearly to clients, users and multidisciplinary teams.
• Working directly with clients and building constructive relationships with people from different professional backgrounds.
• Mentoring colleagues, sharing knowledge and giving thoughtful technical feedback.
• Learning new techniques and technologies when they are useful, while applying appropriate scepticism to emerging approaches.

Desirable experience

Senior Data Scientists will bring different combinations of sector, delivery and technical experience. We would not expect every candidate to have worked in all of the contexts below, but we would expect strong evidence across several of them, alongside the core capabilities described above:

• working in a consultancy or other client-facing environment;
• working within government or the wider public sector;
• working on services where decisions have significant consequences for users;
• taking machine learning or AI systems beyond an initial prototype;
• evaluating, monitoring or assuring production AI systems;
• working with cloud platforms and modern deployment environments;
• working with APIs, data pipelines and production software systems;
• applying privacy, security, accessibility, fairness or responsible-AI considerations;
• working in multidisciplinary agile teams;
• line management, coaching or contributing to the development of a professional practice.

Job Benefits

Life at Made Tech

We’re committed to building a happy, inclusive and diverse workforce. You can get a sense of what it’s like working here from our blog, where we talk about mental health, communities of practice and neurodiversity (as well as our client work and best practice).

Like many organisations, we use Slack to chat to each other. The Slack groups that have formed give an idea of the diversity within Made Tech. If you’d like to speak to someone from one of these groups about their experience as an employee, let your recruitment agent or Made Tech Talent Partner know.

The groups are:

• antiracist-activists
• disability
• lgbtqiaplus-allies-and-activists
• neurodiversity
• parents-carers
• women-in-tech

Benefits

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

✈️ 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave

👶 Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options

👩‍💻 Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff

🤗 Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice.

Ideally, we're looking for candidates holding a current SC clearance. As a minimum, we're looking for all successful candidates for this role to have eligibility. Eligibility for SC requires 5 years' UK residency. Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won't be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.