Lead Healthcare Scientist

Lead Healthcare Scientist

Both Full-time (37.5 hours) and Part-time hours will be considered

About the Organisation:

Public Health Scotland is Scotland’s lead national agency for improving and protecting the health and wellbeing of all of Scotland’s people. Our vision is of a Scotland where everybody thrives. Our focus is on increasing healthy life expectancy and reducing premature mortality. To do this, we use data, intelligence and a place based approach to lead and deliver Scotland’s public health priorities.

The Post:

The role of the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate is to protect the people of Scotland from infectious and environmental hazards; enable high-quality clinical and public health knowledge, research and innovation; and change clinical and public health practice by using audits at a national and local level.

An opportunity has arisen in the Public Health Microbiology team within the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate of PHS. The work of the Public Health Microbiology Team aids the coordinated detection of infectious diseases, characterises microbial pathogens and their variants efficiently and effectively, to supports effective outbreak/pandemic management, treatments and interventions, all within PHS ambitions to reduce the public health burden in Scotland.

The post holder will be an enthusiastic, flexible individual who will provide leadership, expert advice and guidance on microbiology services and how they impact on data, epidemiological analyses, incident response, information products, business process or change initiatives to internal and external customers for PHS to support the delivery of the Public Health Microbiology (PHM) Strategy and the Pathogen Genomics Strategy for Scotland.

The Candidate:

You will be responsible for developing a small scientific team of healthcare scientists to deliver and work collaboratively with colleagues both internal and external. You will lead on the provision of expert advice providing services to, and working in partnership with, a wide range of strategic partners and stakeholders on public health microbiology including, for example, providing advice on microbiology/ virology incident management and response, the commissioning of reference labs, pathogen genomics services and improving laboratory data flows.

You will have strong communication skills, as you will have overall responsibility for interpreting and preparing timely communications about public health briefing notes/Alerts in Scotland, as well as scientific reports and published articles.

Location and Working Pattern:

The post will be based in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Please noted that PHS is currently in the process of relocating from Meridian Court to another Glasgow City Centre location.

PHS operate a hybrid working model with a mixture of working at home and days in the office each week.

Work pattern - Monday to Friday, various hours considered.

There will be an expectation to travel to local areas for some meetings and events.

During times of public health emergency, or other urgent business need, you may be required on a temporary basis to work your normal contracted working hours over 7 days including weekends, in order to meet the needs of the service.

It is a condition of this employment that you must live and remain a resident within the UK for the post in which you will be employed with PHS.

Benefits:

Our benefits package includes pension scheme, comprehensive range of work life balance policies, occupational health services, learning resource centres and discounted leisure, financial and shopping benefits

Further Information:

For an informal discussion on the post, please contact hiring manager Nicola Rowan, Service Manager on nicola.rowan@phs.scot or Patricia Kennedy, Service Manager on patricia.kennedy@phs.scot

Closing date for completed applications is 21 July 2023.

Further information on PHS is available from: www.publichealthscotland.scot

Please note that the majority of correspondence is sent by e-mail only, so please check your e-mail regularly (including junk folders).

Public Health Scotland is an equal opportunities employer and as such guarantees to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for our vacancies