Project Officer

Do you believe in the power of data and think this power should be used to improve the lives of the people living in Scotland? Research Data Scotland needs you!

Are you a self-starter, with bags of energy? Do you pride yourself on being well organised with a keen eye for detail? Have you experience of working in project support or co-ordination?  We’re offering a brilliant opportunity to work with experts in the data field across all RDS programmes. These projects will deliver data innovation to transform services and improve wellbeing and the Project Officer will play a big part in making that happen.

Key details

Role: Project Officer
Salary range: £30,183 - £35,728 (B1)
Hours: 35 per week
Employment type: 2 year fixed term contract
Closing date: 12 November 2023

Download the full job description

About us

Research Data Scotland is a charity set up by the Scottish public sector and leading universities. We help researchers find and make use of data that can improve the lives of people in Scotland. Working in partnership, we do this by widening the range of data available, creating new data assets and providing a single point of contact for safe, secure and effective access to public data in a trustworthy manner.

Data is often locked away in lots of individual systems, across many different organisations, and isn’t in a format that makes access or integration easy. We can help researchers to unlock the potential of this data by giving them information and advice that speeds up and simplifies their work.

RDS aims to provide a step change in the service to researchers, whilst maintaining the high standards of information governance and data security already in place. We aim to work as openly as possible, maintaining standards in transparency and ethics. Our focus is on providing a streamlined service for researchers, as well as extending the range of data available through the service, particularly in the areas of Covid-19, NHS imaging, geospatial data, children and justice services.

Our partners include: Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, National Records of Scotland (NRS), and the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. We work closely with the national and regional safe havens. And we are in contact with other organisations in Scotland and across the UK in the data research sector, including public sector, research and commercial bodies.

About the job

The Project Officer will work alongside Project Managers, Delivery Managers, Data Project Leads and other Data Team Managers to support and co-ordinate their work. No two days will be alike, but you should expect to undertake a wide variety of tasks to help the department run smoothly. You may be scheduling meetings, setting the agenda and distributing papers for all attendees. You’ll be on hand to capture actions and maintain the project risk registers. You’ll prepare meeting papers, taking the time to make sure the information is engaging, presented factually and complete. You’ll update and maintain all the project documentation, including tracking budget spend.

About you

You are a self-starter, with experience of co-ordinating and overseeing project activities.  You are very organised with experience in detailed record keeping. You’ll have excellent verbal and written skills and a good understanding of the tools, practices and techniques to document all aspects of our project portfolio.

Life at RDS

We are a small friendly and highly engaged team of people. We promote continuous learning and work hard to build an inclusive and supportive workplace culture. We live our values of; integrity, transparency, courage, collaboration and humility.

Our people typically work a 35-hour week, with hybrid working on offer from day one. You can choose to work flexibly from home or use one of our desks in the Bayes Centre in central Edinburgh. The whole RDS team meets one day per month in-person in Edinburgh or at an off-site away day in the Central Belt. Individual teams organise their own in-person days to collaborate, develop and socialise together.

We offer 33 days’ annual leave (including public holidays) and have no set closure days. We have a generous pension and enhanced pay for parental/adoption leave. This list of benefits is being added to as the organisation develops, and you can help shape it as part of the team. Our Culture Group helps us seek feedback from colleagues across the organisation to make RDS an even better place to work.