Lead Analyst (Public Service Reform)
12 month Fixed Term Contract
Job purpose
This grade 7 Lead Analyst (Public Service Reform) role has a focus on placement sufficiency for children in care. The postholder will lead and drive the technical data work of England’s first ever Regional Care Cooperative, which formally launches in April 2025. This role will contribute to a key function of the Regional Care Cooperative: to deliver regional data analysis and forecasting to enable agile, needs-led commissioning and market management.
This is an exciting time to join the team. The Greater Manchester Regional Care Cooperative is establishing a “centre of excellence” in data analysis and forecasting to local authorities. This role will be at the forefront of data development and innovation in children’s social care nationally, being part of the first city region to have established linked administrative data to enable a rounded view of children in care and sufficiency, and piloting new approaches to developing our understanding of child need in data. This will enable us to deliver on the Department for Education’s policy around the role of regional data analysis in children’s social care sufficiency. This follows the recommendations of the Competition and Markets Authority and Independent Review of Children's Social Care for local authorities to increase their ability to engage effectively with the market through effective forecasting. This will help us ensure that the right care is available in the right place, at the right time for the more than 6,200 Greater Manchester children and young people in care.
Key information
This is a fixed 12-month term opportunity, with a view to this being extended further subject to further gateway approval of programme-level funding. Secondments are welcomed from all organisations.
This role allows both flexible and hybrid working. It is anticipated that the post holder will spend at least one day per week in the Manchester city centre office, however full time remote working with occasional travel would be considered.
For more information about the role or recruitment process, please contact Hannah Murray (Lead Analyst Children and Young People) at hannah.murray@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk.
Key relationships
This role will benefit from being part of a community of analysts and with opportunities for technical development as well as being well positioned to see the impact of data work and delivery, with the Regional Care Cooperative interfacing with both national policy and local delivery.
The role will be based within the GMCA Research team but the postholder will be embedded within, and deliver directly to, the Greater Manchester Regional Care Cooperative, which is based within the Public Service Reform directorate at the GMCA. These teams operate from the same Manchester office.
The postholder will work as part of a Regional Care Cooperative analytical unit, consisting of the post holder (leading and driving the technical data work), their line manager (leading the analytical function, delivering social research and supporting with evidence-based decision making), and a further analyst (supporting with local data collection and relationships, and programme monitoring and insights).
The postholder will be expected to interact with senior commissioning managers and project managers, and work in close collaboration with other technical specialists both within and outside of the GMCA (for example, colleagues within GMCA Research and Digital teams along with external consultancies and technical leads in local authorities, NHS and criminal justice).
About you
This opportunity relates to one of our Lead Analyst positions (a step up from our early career positions) so the right person for the job will have previous experience of undertaking research and analysis from either academic study or wider work experience. You will have a degree or necessary equivalent skills from your work experience and will be able to demonstrate at least 12 months experience applying your research and analysis skills in a relevant environment.
This is a grade 7 role. The role profile spans three grades with progression opportunities between the grades based on skills and experience. Responsibilities for each grade and expected skills and experience are set out in the role profile.
The core responsibilities of this role will include:
* maintaining and developing the data platform through which linked individual level data on children in care is received from Greater Manchester local authorities
* delivering forecasts on anticipated demand for children in care placements among Greater Manchester local authorities using our demand modelling tool
* building dashboards, developing reports and providing ongoing intelligence to monitor the delivery and outcomes of the Regional Care Cooperative
* providing broader strategic analysis and intelligence on regional sufficiency
* maintaining and developing the Greater Manchester Sufficiency Observatory, our online interactive platform to communicate with the provider market.
Essential skills and experience
The role profile sets out in full the skills and experience of all Lead Analysts in the GMCA Research team. In your application, please clearly set out how your skills and experience meet the essential skills and experience of the role profile at grade 7, paying particular attention to the four areas set out below. Applications for this specific role will be assessed principally against these four areas, with supplementary consideration of the specified desirable skills and experience also listed. Please write no more than 1,500 words.
Do not be put off if you feel less strong on some of the areas we are looking for. Different people bring different skills, knowledge and experience, and we are keen that you apply and have the opportunity to show us the strengths that you will bring to the role.
1. Excellent ICT skills, especially:
* Strong Python programming experience with focus on data engineering (or transferable programming experience)
* Understanding of data pipeline architecture and ETL processes
2. Physical responsibility, especially:
* Experience with cloud services and infrastructure management
* Proficiency in version control using GitHub
3. Strong analytical capacity and experience of data collection, especially:
* Experience of working with complex datasets
* Experience of developing new data collections and data pipelines
4. Strong interpersonal / communication skills with an attention to detail, especially:
* Ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical audiences
* Ability to identify areas for future improvements in work.
Desirable skills and experience
* Proficiency in building reporting dashboards (Python-based or Tableau) (part of “Excellent ICT skills” within the role profile)
* Expertise in data orchestration tools (for example Dagster) (part of “Excellent ICT skills” within the role profile)
* Experience with containerisation technologies (for example Docker) (part of “Excellent ICT skills” with the role profile)
* Understanding of forecasting (part of “Strong analytical capacity” in the role profile)
* Ability to develop new approaches to data analytics and visualisation techniques (part of “Physical responsibility” in the role profile)
* Understanding of information governance, “safe research” principles and practices, and/or safe researcher certification (part of “We hold ourselves to a high standard” within the values and behaviours of the role profile).
Recruitment stages
Candidates successfully sifted at application stage will be invited to interview. All candidates invited to interview will be required to complete a short pre-interview assessment which will be sent to them 48 hours in advance of the interview to be returned within 24 hours.
The pre-interview assessment will require candidates to use a dataset to answer a series of questions. This will require the use of a programming language of the candidate’s own choosing such as Python or R.
The interview will entail a question and answer section in relation to the pre-interview assessment. The interview will then consist of competency based questions to assess candidates against the same four criteria within the role profile as at application stage.
About us:
As an employer, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is made up of a number of key Greater Manchester strategic functions and service providers including; Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS); Waste and Resources; Environment; Work and Skills; Research; Public Sector Reform; Police, Crime and Criminal Justice; Homelessness; the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub and the Commissioning Hub.
We value the diversity of our employees, and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects our diverse communities across Greater Manchester. We encourage applications from all suitably qualified individuals, irrespective of people's age, disability, Trans status and Non-binary identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. We have guidance in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability.
To find out more about working for us please click here:
Our offer:
We are committed to offering training and development. In relation to this role, this is expected to include:
* Eligibility to the lead analyst progression framework, which spans up to grade 8
* 5% professional development time per month
* Being part of a wider team of around 40 research managers, lead analysts and analysts
* Membership of the GMCA Quantitative Specialism Network
* Joining a community of regional quantitative data managers and analysts at the forefront of regional data work in children’s social care data
* Access to the ONS Learning Hub training platform (as used by the Government Statistical Service)
* Access to Python training workshops and support sessions from Data to Insight
* Sharing an office with the rest of the GMCA along with the Office for National Statistics and NHS Population Health.
More generally, in return for your hard work, we offer our employees a competitive package as part of our offer that you can find out more about here:
Greater Manchester Combined Authority - Home | greater.jobs
Mandatory Information:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
We embrace AI to enhance our operations and to innovate our services. However, we value human talent and are looking for passionate individuals to join our organisation. Please ensure you personally complete your application and read all the instructions carefully to maximise your chances of success.
Applications that rely too heavily on AI may be rejected during shortlisting, however we understand that AI may be used as a reasonable adjustment, if using AI to support your application, please give a brief explanation why to help ensure fair selection process.
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Hybrid working
This role is part of GMCA’s hybrid working scheme. As part of our commitment to ‘Build Back Fairer’ in Greater Manchester following the Covid-19 pandemic, we have evolved our management methods by trusting and empowering staff to deliver their work in the best way that suits the business and their individual needs, and supports health and wellbeing. Our hybrid working policy sets out a flexible approach, combining attendance at our [Manchester city centre office / Fire and Rescue service HQ in Swinton / other location] with remote working, typically from home; the location of work is primarily dictated by the needs of the business: ‘Do what is right for you and the business on that day’. If appointed to the role you will work with your manager to agree and regularly review the best working pattern for you, your team and your work.