Research Fellow in Data Analytics

About the role

The primary purpose of this post is to lead the scientific and operational delivery of two NIHR-funded health research programmes:

1. Digital multi-component intervention to IMPROVE the care of older people living with Diabetes and chronic Kidney Disease: a type 2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation cluster randomised trial in primary care
2. Digitally Integrated Care Pathways for Multiple-Long-Term-Conditions Management in Primary Care, Sri Lanka.

The postholder will be responsible for full cycle project management across multiple work packages, coordinating multidisciplinary teams in the UK and Sri Lanka, managing deliverables against funder milestones, and proactively securing additional grant funding.

This postholder will lead the scientific and operational delivery of large-scale population health research focused on multiple long-term conditions across diverse healthcare settings, with demonstrable experience of adapting research methods to diverse resource and data environments.

You will also take full ownership of project management across the entire research cycle: from protocol development and regulatory approvals, through to field coordination in the UK and LMICs, data analysis, and dissemination. This includes managing multidisciplinary and cross site teams, coordinating with primary care networks and LMIC partners, and proactively identifying and mitigating operational risks without regular supervision.

The role sits within a team that routinely uses large scale primary care electronic records, health services data, and public health research platforms including CPRD. A demonstrated ability to work across the full analytic pipeline—from raw EHR extraction to applied pharmacoepidemiologic inference—is essential, as is substantial experience in integrating pharmacovigilance and trial emulation findings into intervention optimisation for multiple long term conditions.

Whilst working within the framework agreed with the post holder’s line manager, the post holder is expected to manage their own workload with minimal supervision, anticipate and respond to shifting and competing demands.

This is a full-time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 2 years.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. PhD in Epidemiology
2. Demonstrated ability to lead qualitative and quantitative workstreams in both UK and low- or middle-income country (LMIC) settings, including adapting study designs and analytic methods to diverse resource and data environments
3. Proven track record of independently conducting target trial emulation, pharmacovigilance analyses, and data-driven clinical trials using EHR, evidenced by extensive peer-reviewed publications as first and senior authors
4. Extensive practical experience with EHR data extraction, record linkage, cleaning, processing, and analyses using R or Python
5. Full lifecycle management of research programmes, including coordinating multidisciplinary teams across countries (UK and LMIC), meeting funder milestones, and mitigating operational risks without regular supervision
6. Demonstrable contribution to successful funding applications (e.g., NIHR, MRC, Wellcome)
7. Evidence of building research capacity in LMIC settings

Desirable criteria

1. Familiarity with coordinating multidisciplinary teams from low and middle income countries (LMICs, particularly in Sri Lanka) and generate multidisciplinary outputs spanning clinical, data science, and implementation science
2. Substantial expertise in clinical epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology studies applied to vulnerable populations (e.g. pregnant women or older adults) and multiple long term conditions (e.g. cardio renal metabolic syndrome) in real world primary care settings
3. Evidence of supervising PhD students
4. Experience in conducting systematic reviews or meta-analyses