Data Scientist - Permanent/Contract

Data Scientist - Permanent/Contract

Permanent salary: up to £70,000 | Contract rate: £380-£420 per day, outside IR35

Working pattern: Hybrid - one day per week in London

About Scrumconnect Consulting

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning digital consultancy, recognised for delivering impactful and innovative technology solutions across UK government departments. Our work has positively influenced the lives of over 40 million UK citizens.

We are passionate about user-centred design, agile delivery and building digital services that make a real difference. Our teams work at the forefront of innovation, helping organisations transform and deliver high-quality, scalable solutions that truly matter.

This opportunity is available on either a permanent basis, with a salary of up to £70,000, or on a contract basis at £380-£420 per day, outside IR35.

About the role

We are looking for a Data Scientist to turn complex public sector data into insight that shapes services and decisions. You will analyse data, build models and explain findings clearly to policy, product and technical colleagues.

Key responsibilities

• Explore, clean and analyse large and complex datasets.
• Build statistical and machine learning models to answer real business and policy questions.
• Assess data quality and help define data standards and validation rules.
• Create clear visualisations and reports for non-technical audiences.
• Work with data engineers and architects to make models and analysis reproducible.
• Apply responsible and ethical use of data and AI, including bias and explainability.
• Work with user researchers, designers and product managers to make sure analysis meets real needs.
• Present findings to senior stakeholders and influence decisions.

Essential skills and experience

• Proven experience as a data scientist in a commercial or public sector setting.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, including libraries such as pandas and scikit-learn.
• Solid grounding in statistics and machine learning methods.
• Experience with data visualisation tools such as Power BI, Tableau or Python libraries.
• Experience using version control (Git) and writing reproducible code.
• Ability to explain technical findings in plain English.

Desirable

• UK government or public sector experience.
• Experience with cloud data platforms such as Azure, AWS or Databricks.
• Experience with natural language processing or generative AI.
• Knowledge of data ethics frameworks and data protection (UK GDPR).