Data Scientist
HYBRID (1 - 2 days/week in the Holborn office)
Times Higher Education is the data provider underpinning university excellence worldwide. As the organization behind the influential university ranking, with nearly five decades of expertise in higher education analysis, we offer unparalleled insights into global university performance. Our data and benchmarking tools are used by prestigious universities to achieve strategic goals, and our events series foster thought leadership in higher education.
Role context
The data team at Times Higher Education handles university data to produce analyses, including rankings. All projects involve data gathering, validation, processing, and output, with this role covering all stages in collaboration with senior team members.
The data scientist will support the production of core and secondary rankings by QA on data inputs, processing survey results, and assisting other teams in understanding results.
This role suits a hands-on data scientist (or data analyst) with strong Python and SQL skills who can quickly become proficient with our systems and domain.
The ideal candidate will have a keen interest in data wrangling and analytics and be highly collaborative.
Responsibilities
- Support Senior Data Scientist in producing rankings, including:
- Writing and maintaining data processing codebase (Python)
- Conducting data quality analysis and developing QA processes
- Suggesting analyses for dissemination through various media
- Statistical review of data to support ranking evolution
- Assist Senior Data Scientist in data consultancy projects, including:
- Reviewing and maintaining codebase and ETL pipelines (Python, Excel)
- Building skills in bibliometrics analyses (Databricks, Python)
- Collaborating with experts to develop scalable analyses for the HE sector
- Work with Data Engineer to disseminate data project results, including:
- Developing analyses and dashboards with the Product team
- Providing ad-hoc insights by querying university data (SQL)
Experience
- Implementing data QA pipelines
- Working with external data sources
- Producing high-level and in-depth data analyses
- Delivering insights to diverse audiences
- Ownership of data streams/projects
- Collaborating on complex analytical projects
Essential skills
- Data modelling and statistics fundamentals
- Strong Python skills (pandas, modular code, repositories)
- GitHub data management
- Data governance and documentation
- SQL skills (joins, subqueries, CTEs)
- Data wrangling best practices
- Advanced Excel skills
- Attention to detail and debugging
- Time management
- Data visualization and presentation skills
Desirable
- AWS
- Tableau
- Higher education data knowledge
- Performance assessment frameworks
- Survey design/data quality experience
- Entity recognition / free-text matching
- Public speaking
We value individuality and diversity, fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can be authentic and contribute their perspectives.