Purpose of the post

HDR UK seeks an exceptional Chief Data Officer to provide visionary leadership at the forefront of data-driven discovery. This new senior role will shape and deliver HDR UK’s data strategy and approach to AI enabled innovation by ensuring that HDR UK’s infrastructure, technologies, and platforms not only meet the evolving requirements of researchers, clinicians, and innovators, but also set the standard for excellence in health data science. As a member of the Senior Leadership Team, the Chief Data Officer will define and drive a bold vision for how data can accelerate research, improve health, and realise HDR UK’s mission. Central to the role will be forging deep collaborations with UK-wide and international data partners, inspiring a culture of openness and innovation, and ensuring that the UK continues to lead globally in harnessing health data for scientific discovery and societal impact.

Main responsibilities

• a) Data Strategy & AI

• Define and lead HDR UK’s data strategy, ensuring alignment with UK-wide health and research priorities and positioning health data as core to Institute delivery, while driving prioritisation based on researcher requirements.
• Work across the Institute and with data partners to ensure that HDR UK supports and positions the UK at the forefront of trustworthy AI innovation.
• Champion FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and trustworthy data principles across partners and platforms.
• Lead on data strategy risk management; put in place processes that identify and document data risks across the organisation and embed them into wider governance processes.

• b) Data Science, Data Engineering & Technical Innovation

• Lead the development and delivery of HDR UK’s core data products and services, in alignment with HDR UK supported infrastructure, including metadata catalogues and common data models (required, for example, for federated analytics capabilities and cohort discovery).
• Support the development and adoption of data standards and phenotype definitions for large-scale health research to harmonise how health data are collected, represented, and exchanged – aligning efforts across the breadth of HDR UK and with external partners.
• Work closely with the Chief Technology Officer to support the data strategy underpinning our software products, services and associated dashboards.
• Advance reproducible, open and secure data science approaches that enable population-scale and advanced analytical research requiring complex multimodal data, over-time.
• Recommend open data technical standards and terminologies for use across the Institute and in alignment with partners, weighing the impact of variables including privacy, security, compliance, ownership, and performance questions.
• Provide input to teams across the Institute on database and data warehouse optimisation.
• Enable the application of cutting-edge analytical methods including AI, machine learning and causal inference through secure use of high-quality data assets.
• Work with the Institute’s Legal, Trust and Ethics team to ensure robust data governance, privacy-preserving technologies, and security frameworks are in place, with ongoing public input.

• c) Ecosystem and Partnership Development

• Engage with key stakeholders across the UK and internationally, including NHS organisations, regulators, data custodians, patient groups, research funders and commercial partners to foster collaboration, innovation and alignment.
• Identify underlying causes of data challenges faced by health research users and innovators and make strategic recommendations to resolve them.
• Build trust by ensuring transparency, public engagement, and robust governance over data access and use.
• Work closely with the data standards ecosystem and UK Health Data Research Alliance to drive adoption across the health data ecosystem.
• Represent HDR UK’s data leadership nationally and internationally, contributing to standards bodies, policy, regulatory, and ethical frameworks.

• d) Aligning data products & services to user-needs

• Ensure that cutting edge data services provided by HDR UK respond to a range of researcher and innovator needs, working with teams across the Institute.
• Translate the needs of users into requirements or specifications to be delivered by either the CDO or wider HDR UK teams (themselves potentially working in partnership with external service providers). Ensure the user voice directly informs our data and data technology planning, and the strategy for sourcing both.
• Implement strategies to improve data discoverability, quality, linkage, interoperability, and usability at national scale. Ensuring data can be easily used, reused and shared by those who need it relying on HDR UK products and services.
• Provide thought leadership on a sustainable data product and service portfolio.

• e) Leadership and Team Development

• Lead and engage with a multi-disciplinary team of data architects, engineers, scientists, and programme leads, managing complex interfaces to underpin matrix-delivery across the Institute.
• Foster a high-performance, inclusive culture committed to collaboration, continuous learning, innovation, and public benefit.
• Serve as a member of the HDR UK Senior Leadership Team, contributing to organisational strategy, performance, and delivery.
• Work in partnership with technologists and data infrastructure specialists across the Institute and with a range of external partners.

To view the full JD for this role, please download below.