Data Scientist

We provide meaningful careers that connect people with purpose.

We are united by a common purpose of providing the best and safest care; and by our shared values of Care, Truth, Participation, Compassion and Dignity.

Netcare invites you to be part of our journey.

ROLE SUMMARY

The Data Scientist will support the Data Science and Analytics team in creating and enabling data-driven measurement, insights, monitoring and decision support. This individual will add value to business areas by providing insights, applying data science to inform and optimise decision making and build automated predictive and prescriptive analytics solutions that support various business functions and address healthcare challenges.
The role requires involvement in the whole data science development process of gaining a business understanding, defining the problem, data cleansing and feature engineering, business modelling and simulation, hypothesis generation and testing, machine learning model training, testing and refinement and finally deployment and monitoring of predicted outcomes within the business solutions.

KEY WORK OUTPUT AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

• Identify and test innovative data science techniques that can be utilised in predictive analytics solutions across Netcare.
• Assist with research on trends in Data Science, specifically for the application in the healthcare industry.
• Engage with business stakeholders in the discovery process to identify the business problem/opportunity, elicit requirements and discuss the expected outcomes of modelling/solutions.
• Partner with business stakeholders to define approaches to resolving key business problems and focus on the development of new business strategies.
• Assist in developing conceptual designs or models to address business requirements.
• Collaborate with subject matter experts to select the relevant sources of data and understand the business requirements to ensure that the models are delivered in an appropriate manner.
• Partner with the Data Engineering team to obtain internal and external information and manage data utilisation.
• Perform pre-processing of data which includes tasks such as data manipulation, transformation, normalisation, standardisation, visualisation and features engineering.
• Review existing data analytics solutions (code and/or models), measure quality and identify potential improvements
• Use data profiling and visualisation to understand and explain data characteristics that will inform modelling approaches.
• Identify and implement the appropriate data mining/statistics/machine learning techniques.
• Implement predictive models on large datasets (including distributed parallel computation platforms such as spark).
• Perform business modelling that translate decisions and business processes into a computational model.
• Validate and test analysis/models using appropriate techniques (back testing, A/B testing, scenario modelling, etc.).
• Implement models using Netcare standard processes and techniques.
• Monitor and maintain models with specific focus on model performance and the results being fit for purpose.
• Ensure full compliance to statutory regulations, policies, procedures, best practice, and professional standards and is in line with the Netcare strategy.
• Review and update all policies relating to data science.
• Communicate findings to business with various skill levels and in various roles, presenting trends, correlations and patterns found in complicated datasets in a manner that clearly and concisely conveys meaningful insights and defends recommendations.
• Generate concise reports with relevant visualisations and commentary for management.

TRANSFORMATION OF OUR SOCIETY

Continuing to invest in and develop our workforce and communities

• Embrace diversity to strengthen inclusivity and belonging

Stakeholder relationships

• Work effectively and co-operatively with others so as to establish and maintain good working relationships that are mutually beneficial.
• Establish and service relationships with all internal and external stakeholders.
• Contribute towards an environment which stimulates the morale and productivity of employees and drives employee engagement.
• Consult with all business divisions to ensure an optimal outcome, suitable and practical application of the end product while ensuring regular communication on progress as well as issues to business management and end-users
• Develop and maintain collaborative relationships with senior stakeholders in the business that encourages participation in the accomplishment of improvement objectives.
• Create and maintain a positive environment where the differences of others are recognised, understood, and valued, so that all can reach their full potential and maximise their contributions.
• Leverages relationship networks and partnerships to gain influence and support for work initiatives.
• Demonstrates personal commitment to internal and external stakeholders by fulfilling responsibilities, involving others, gaining support for ideas generated and removing obstacles to team accomplishments.
• Collaborates with stakeholders who have been responsible for managing data in the different business units and influences these stakeholders to embrace change and ensure alignment of data practices.

Personal and professional development

• Assume responsibility for own personal and professional development to maintain a superior level of skill and knowledge. This must include expanding technical knowledge to drive data management.
• Maintain current knowledge of data management via literature reviews and conferences to keep knowledge up to date.
• Ensure ongoing knowledge of industry standards as well as best practice and identify gaps between these definitions/data elements and company data elements/definitions.
• Participate in the relevant knowledge sharing forums.

SKILLS PROFILE

EDUCATION

Required

• Degree (Honours, Masters or PHD) in Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics and / or a combination of these.
• Relevant data science certifications such as Python, Microsoft, AWS, Hadoop, big data, machine learning, cloud infrastructure.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Required

• A minimum of 5-6 years’ experience in data science related projects.
• Experience with Python/Microsoft ML and tools available within the machine learning ecosystem (i.e.numpy, pandas, matplotlib, SciPy stack) and working in Jupyter notebooks.
• Experience with SQL and working with large-scale data sets.
• Knowledge and practical experience applying machine learning techniques.
• Experience working in agile development teams.
• Experience in operationalising data science solutions or similar product development.
• Experience in a high-scale production environment is critical.

KNOWLEDGE

Required

• Provide support to the ever-evolving Netcare strategy of person centred health and care and the digitisation strategy. Continuously deepen the awareness of the strategy to address new challenges within the Healthcare sector, to build a competitive advantage and sustainability through the Netcare moat strategy.
• Knowledge and understanding of the Data Science Development Cycle: business understanding, data profiling, feature derivation and selection, data modelling, model evaluation, productionisation, monitoring.
• Outstanding problem solving and analytical skills.
• Knowledge of how the business functions and the underlying strategy which supports the business model as well as improving clinical health and care.
• The ability to build, analyse and interpret numerical and non-numerical data to determine potential statistical inferences to inform business and clinical decisions.
• Ability in applying statistical machine learning techniques to predictive modelling problems and translating this into business solutions.
• Ability to clean and unify messy and complex data sets for easy access and analysis. Combining structured and unstructured data.
• Ability to provide detailed explanations (visually and verbally), representing information in the form of a chart, diagram, picture, using tools such as Kibana, Tableau, Power BI, etc.
• Write programming code (python / java) based on a prepared design.
• Understand leading edge technologies and best practice around Big Data, platforms and distributed data processing i.e. Hadoop ecosystem (distributed computational power)-HDFS/Spark/Kafka.
• Ability to conceptualise and frame a problem, develop hypothesis and identify objective measures to estimate accuracy of machine learning/statistical processes and perform testing and validation with careful experiments.
• Understanding of data flows, ETL and processing of structured and unstructured data within the data architecture.
• Comprehensive solution design based on a good understanding of the Big Data Architecture.
• Strong Business and clinical knowledge that will contribute to exposing patterns and an aptitude to understanding how the business functions and the underlying strategy which supports the business model as well as improving clinical health and care.
• Knowledge of health-related policies, procedures and legislation.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

In the event of any physical or psychological limitation that may impair the employee’s ability to perform the required job function, the employee must consult the employer for reasonable accommodation.

SKILLS

Coaching Others

• The capacity to recognise development areas in others and support them to facilitate personal development through coaching.

Leading and Managing Change

• The capacity to implement and support change initiatives and to provide leadership in times of uncertainty.

Performance Development

• The ability to evaluate and develop different levels of capacity within a team to achieve set objectives.

Taking Action

• Capable of recognising the need for action, considering possible risks and taking responsibility for results.

Decision Making

• Capable of making decisions timeously and taking responsibility for the consequences.

Managing Self

• Capacity to plan, organise and control own work environment by setting appropriate priorities and achieving set objectives within a given time frame.

Customer Focus and Service Delivery

• The capacity to identify and respond to the needs of internal and external customers.

Adapting and Responding to Change

• Capable of supporting and advocating change initiatives and managing own reaction to change.

Continuous Improvement

• The capacity to improve systems and processes to facilitate continuous improvement.

Technical Knowledge

• The capacity to perform a technical function to required standards.

WORKING CONDITIONS

• Professional flexibility in working hours while supporting daily business operations.
• Will interact with internal and external customers through several different means.
• Travel to support the functions of the role may be required.

NETCARE VALUES AND BEHAVIOURS

Netcare Values
At Netcare, our core value is care. We care about the dignity of our patients and all members of the Netcare family. We care about the participation of our people and our partners in everything we do. We care about truth in all our actions. We are passionate about quality care and professional excellence.

• At Netcare, our core value is care.
• We care about the dignity of our patients and all members of the Netcare family.
• We care about the participation of our people and our healthcare partners in everything that we do.
• We care about the truth in all our actions.
• We listen with empathy and respond with acts of compassion in all interactions with our patients and their families.

The Netcare Way

Netcare is committed to providing quality care. Our basic service standard holds us accountable for the below seven behaviours which you will be accountable to uphold:

• Respect - I always greet everyone to show my respect.
• Identity - I always wear my name badge to show my identity.
• Dignity - I always treat others with consideration and humility to uphold dignity
• Care - I always act in the best interest of Netcare and others to show I care
• Compassion - I always listen with empathy and respond with kind action to show my compassion
• Appreciation - I always say thank you to show my appreciation.
• Diversity- I always embrace diversity to strengthen inclusivity and belonging.

Join the team committed to providing the best and safest health and care.