About Us
Our Future Health is an ambitious collaboration between the public, charity and private sectors, designed to help people live healthier lives for longer through better prevention, earlier detection and improved treatment of diseases. We will speed up the discovery of new methods of early disease detection, and the evaluation of new diagnostic tools, to help identify and treat diseases early, when outcomes are usually better. With over 2.5M volunteers across the UK, we’re now the world’s biggest health research programme of its kind, and our volunteer group is also more diverse than other, similar health research programmes.
Technology and data are central to our mission. Our systems power web sites, clinics across the UK, secure analytics and research systems, pipelines that process highly sensitive health and genetic data, and we are continuing to grow our data capability to support this ambition.
We are looking for a Data Manager to join our Data Operations Team and work at national scale on a mission that genuinely improves lives. This is a rare opportunity to work within the data management across a range of large-scale data types, including genetic and health records data; as well as gain exposure to governance, product-oriented approaches, with further opportunities to learn about technical systems, agile delivery, and data as a product.
As a Data Manager you will champion data governance as an enabler rather than a blocker, whilst being an important liaison between the data protection and engineering teams. You'll support the safe, effective and scalable use of health data by implementing and supporting practical processes that protect participant trust and enable researchers and teams to use data effectively and with confidence.
The role will:
- Help maintain trust in Our Future Health by making sure data is governed, accessed and used responsibly, in line with legal, ethical and information security requirements.
- Help internal teams and researchers use data easily, effectively, and with confidence by putting practical processes and guidance in place.
- Improve how we work day to day by strengthening data management workflows, supporting consistent decisions, and reducing friction around data access.
- Support the organisation as it grows by embedding data management practices that are clear, repeatable, and able to scale over time.
Responsibilities will include:
- Help define the scope, specifications, and operational requirements for new data flows, and support teams to resolve issues when they arise.
- Build strong, collaborative relationships with technology, information security, and data protection teams to understand requirements and stay aligned.
- Help develop and maintain data policies and procedures that protect participant privacy, support lawful and accurate data use, enable high-quality data releases and scale with the organisation — working closely with technology teams to make sure they can be implemented in practice.
- Keep clear, up-to-date documentation of data management processes, decisions and support workflows, and look for ways to improve and streamline them.
- Support the development of scalable data management and governance solutions (such as data classification, cataloging, or metadata management), providing clear, well-structured input into technical solutions owned by other teams.
- Support the roll-out and adoption of governance tools and processes by promoting good practice, creating training materials, running sessions, and communicating clearly with different user groups.
- Provide second-line support for data users, helping to triage requests, resolve routine data queries, and escalate issues when specialist input is needed.
- Act as a trained Airlock Reviewer when required, supporting the safe import and export of data, tools and outputs within our Trusted Research Environment.
This role will be fully hybrid with the expectation we get together in our Holborn, London office at least once per month.
Requirements
We welcome applications from all who may not feel they match the full criteria, so if you have most of the below, we'd like to hear from you:
- Ability to contribute to the design and implementation of operational frameworks and ways of working that support strategic goals and work at scale.
- Ability to draft and refine technical policies and processes informed by business needs and stakeholder input, with support from peers and senior specialists.
- Ability to engage and influence stakeholders to help embed new processes.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts in accessible, value-driven terms.
- Ability to work effectively with technology teams and contribute clear, well-structured requirements into technical delivery work.
- Familiarity with agile delivery and supporting incremental adoption of new tools or processes.
- A solid understanding of data management best practices, GDPR, information security standards such as ISO 27001 and the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit, sufficient to apply them in day-to-day work.
- Resilience and motivation to problem solve.
- Working knowledge of R or Python, sufficient to understand, run and review outputs from code.
Although not essential, this would be helpful:
- Experience with metadata management, data lineage and cataloguing tools, data quality management and observability systems.
- An understanding of the needs of how data is used by researchers.
- Experience of designing and delivering training to users on new systems / processes.
Benefits
- Competitive base salary from £58,000
- Generous Pension Scheme – We invest in your future with employer contributions of up to 12%
- 30 Days Holiday pro rata + Bank Holidays – Enjoy a generous holiday allowance with the flexibility to take bank holidays when it suits you
- Enhanced Parental Leave – Supporting you during life’s biggest moments
- Cycle to Work Scheme – Save 25-39% on a new bike and accessories through salary sacrifice
- Home & Tech Savings – Get up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products, spreading the cost over 12 months through salary sacrifice
- EV Scheme – Save up to 40% on a brand new electric vehicle all-inclusive package through salary sacrifice
- £1,000 Employee Referral Bonus – Know someone amazing? Get rewarded for bringing them on board!
- Wellbeing Support – Access to Mental Health First Aiders, plus 24/7 online GP services and an Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family
- A Great Place to Work – We have a lovely Central London office in Holborn, and offer flexible and remote working arrangements
Working with us
We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures. It is vital that a diverse range of people participate in Our Future Health so we can help make discoveries that benefit everyone. We believe that a diverse workforce will help us to achieve that goal.
Join us and become part of the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases.
Let’s prevent disease together.
We recommend you apply as soon as possible as occasionally due to high volumes of applications, we need to close our postings early.
At Our Future Health, we recognise the importance of having a diverse workforce and ensuring that all candidates, regardless of their background, have equitable access to our application process. We proactively encourage applicants who identify as having a disability, neurodiversity, or long-term health conditions to let us know if they require any reasonable adjustments as part of their application process.
If you do require any reasonable adjustments, please email us at [email protected]
Skills Required
- Experience in data management best practices
- Strong communication skills for stakeholder engagement
- Familiarity with GDPR and information security standards
- Working knowledge of R or Python
- Ability to draft technical policies and processes
What We Do
Our Future Health is the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases. Our mission is to create an incredibly detailed picture of the UK population’s health, by recruiting up to five million adult volunteers from across the UK. Each volunteer will be asked to fill out a questionnaire and provide a blood sample that can be linked to their health records. Taken together, the data will present health researchers with a powerful tool to identify new ways of tackling diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and dementia. It's an unprecedented challenge that involves answering questions that have never been asked before – ethical, practical, and technological. And by getting these answers right, we believe Our Future Health will allow future generations to live in good health for longer. We are currently expanding our team and looking for specialists across various fields – people who are motivated by the opportunity of creating something new that will make a difference to society. Click on the Jobs tab above to start exploring our current opportunities. Our Future Health is a registered charity in England, Wales and Scotland.
