Location
Blackfriars, London - hybrid working (two days per week in the London office, typically Tuesday and Thursday)

Hours
37.5 hours per week

Salary
Circa £66,800 per annum plus excellent benefits including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more

About the Role
Challenge Works, part of the innovation foundation Nesta, is seeking an experienced Health Data Innovation Lead to support the delivery of innovative health data programmes focused on neurodegenerative diseases. Challenge Works is a world leader in designing and delivering high-impact challenge prizes that bring together innovators, experts and communities to solve pressing societal problems. With a strong track record in data-driven innovation, including the £8 million Longitude Prize on ALS and the Smart Data Challenge, this role will build on expertise at the intersection of health, data and artificial intelligence.

The successful candidate will work within a team of innovation specialists and alongside data and technology partners to support data components across a portfolio of health innovation programmes. Key responsibilities include preparing and supporting health datasets for innovators, improving dataset documentation and usability, coordinating access processes, and providing technical guidance to innovation teams. The role acts as a technical bridge between innovators, data providers and programme teams to ensure datasets and supporting resources enable successful challenge delivery.

This is a unique opportunity to contribute to programmes that harness health, genomic, lifestyle and environmental data to improve prevention, early detection and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The role requires strong technical expertise in biomedical and health data, excellent communication skills, and the ability to support practical delivery of data-driven innovation programmes.

Experience
- Degree in bioinformatics, computational biology, data science, health informatics, genomics, epidemiology, biomedical sciences or a related discipline
- Experience working with complex health, clinical, genomic, biomedical or population-level datasets
- Experience supporting data preparation, quality assessment, harmonisation, integration or linkage workflows
- Understanding of processes required to make health data accessible, well-documented and fit-for-purpose for research and innovation
- Experience working with data users, researchers or technical teams to understand requirements, resolve data-related challenges and support effective use of datasets
- Ability to interpret and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Strong organisational skills and experience managing technical deliverables within complex projects

About you
- Excellent communicator with the ability to act as a technical bridge between innovators, data providers and programme teams
- Proactive and collaborative, able to work effectively within multidisciplinary teams
- Passionate about enabling responsible and innovative use of health data to drive impactful research and technology development

Qualifications
- Essential: Relevant degree as noted above
- Desirable: Experience working with neurodegenerative disease, neuroscience, genomics, rare disease or biomedical research datasets
- Familiarity with AI and machine learning applications in healthcare or life sciences research
- Experience supporting users of research data platforms, secure data environments or Trusted Research Environments (TREs)
- Knowledge of health data infrastructure and initiatives such as UK Biobank, Our Future Health, HDR UK, NHS datasets, Genomics England or similar resources
- Experience developing data documentation, metadata standards or approaches to improve data usability and interoperability
- Experience working in collaborative research, innovation or challenge-based programmes