Job ID: 1079

Closing Date: 1st July 2025

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more.

Overview

Data Connect and the Secure Data Services are joint services within the Research and Innovation IT team. Together they support and enable researchers in getting access to NHS and social care data safely and securely for academic research projects. They are strategically important services in the University that enable research that will directly impact on the quality and length of people’s lives.

The University and its partners have been awarded funding by DARE UK to develop and deliver the mechanisms for federated governance for using NHS data in research across the Yorkshire and Humber region. The PANORAMA project will involve the adoption of the SATRE framework, creating and maintaining a shared repository of governance standards, documents and best practice.

The Technical Delivery Officer (for the PANORAMA project) will support the delivery of two technical tools to enable federation: TRE-FX, which supports federated querying via RO-Crates technology, and SACRO, which supports the semi-automated checking of research outputs, including machine learning and Artificial Intelligence models. Working closely with the Research and Innovation Platforms Team, you will oversee the technical delivery of and participate in the testing of these tools, and create standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guides with both the partners within the PANORAMA project, and across the TRE Early Adopter programmes, where appropriate.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, motivated recent graduate in (health) Data Science, Computer Science or related field who is interested in the deployment, user acceptance testing and user-friendliness of documentation. This role is an exciting opportunity for someone who is interested in supporting health and social science research in secure computing environments, and will make a significant contribution in advancing secure data infrastructure and federation across the UK.

Main duties and responsibilities

The primary responsibilities of this role are delivering the two technical components of the TREvolution capabilities (TRE-FX and SACRO), including feasibility and deployment. You will receive support from peers, the Yorkshire & Humber SDE Information Governance Manager (based at Sheffield), the Secure Data Services Research Data Manager, and the core TREvolution team to ensure project success. The duties of the role are:

• Completing Information Security assessments of the tools for submission to Information Security team for approval of the software install in the Secure Data Services.
• Coordination and reporting on the progress of the installation of the technology components by the R&I platforms team.
• User acceptance testing of TRE-FX components (Bunny, Hutch and the federated querying layer).
  Working with other teams in IT Services to ensure that the technical components are delivered to the organisation’s standards.
• Liaising with counterparts across the PANORAMA project (colleagues at the two other Secure Data Environments in the north of England), and TREvolution teams, feeding back on any UAT or bugs for the external technical teams to investigate and fix.
• Participate in Communities of Practice across the DARE UK TREvolution and Early Adopter programme, sharing experiences and good practices, and reporting back on wider conversations to the Principal Investigator.
• Completing tasks according to the agreed project plans and project milestones, and helping, as needed, to provide details for project reports to the funder (prepared by the project manager and Work Package leads).
• Summarising documentation provided by the TREvolution teams, making them accessible and easy to understand that can be used across the project partners (and, where appropriate, wider Early Adopter teams).
• Liaising with pre- and post-award teams within Faculty Research Hubs, to monitor project income is appropriately received into Data Connect.
• Providing, with support from others, communications on the project  via the website, social media and other channels.
• Carry out other duties, commensurate with the grade and remit of the post.

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement (with the ability to purchase more), a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more.

We are a research university with a global reputation for excellence. Our ideas and expertise change the world for the better, making a real difference to society. We know that when people come together with different views, approaches and insights it can lead to richer, more creative and innovative teaching and research and the highest levels of student experience. Our University Vision (www.sheffield.ac.uk/vision) outlines our commitment to building a diverse community of staff and students that recognises and values the abilities, backgrounds, beliefs and ways of living for everyone.