Job vacancy: Data Ethicist

Company: Information Governance Services Limited
Job Title: Junior Consultant in Data Ethics
Salary: £35,000 – 40,000 (depending on experience)
Full Time / Part Time: Full Time, 37 hours per week
Contract: Permanent
Start Date: Immediate
Junior Consultant in Data Ethics

How to apply
Please send your CV and a cover letter to: careers@informationgovernanceservices.com. Direct LinkedIn applications will not be considered.

A little about us
At Information Governance Services we are a consultancy firm that cares deeply about each and every client. This attitude has enabled us to work with some of the world’s leading institutions. For the most part, our consultants have legal backgrounds (barristers, solicitors, legal executives or law graduates), and we are diversifying to provide a complementary consultancy offering for ethical aspects of data governance, machine learning, and AI to our clients. We are ambitious and have significant plans for further growth, and we are looking for hardworking people with the potential to do extraordinary things to join us.

A little about the role
The Junior Consultant in Data Ethics position will play a critical role in enabling IGS to give robust, reliable, practical and implementable advice to its clients about ethical challenges that they face in: data handling, sharing, linking, protection, governance; machine learning, and AI.
The successful candidate will be able to help clients to identify and mitigate ethical risks associated with their organisational processes and will be able both to provide training in data ethics and support the development of organisational policies for ensuring ethical practice in all aspects of data handling.
The Junior Consultant in Data Ethics will report to the Head of Data Ethics, providing support to and collaboration on IGS’ data ethics advice for its clients.
A key demand of this role will be to be proactive in developing and growing IGS’ data ethics offering. In collaboration with the Head of Data Ethics, the Junior Consultant in Data Ethics will provide thought leadership in data ethics, towards expanding the range of data ethics services that IGS can offer.
This is an exciting role with significant prospects for development and career progression in a dynamic and growing organization at the cutting edge of data governance and ethics consultancy services.

Key duties and responsibilities
• Provide expert advice to IGS clients on data ethics, ethics of machine learning, and AI.
• Provide training in data ethics for IGS clients, helping them to understand the standards that they should meet, and how to apply ethical principles in practice.
• Assist in the development of ethical data governance policies for IGS clients.
• Provide guidance and support to other IGS team members, collaborating where necessary to give input from a data ethics perspective where this is relevant to legal advice being given.
• Update IGS colleagues about current controversies, developments, and dilemmas across the broad field of data ethics, helping to integrate the data ethics offering into the business.
• Delivering communication about IGS’ data ethics offering via production of written materials, such as articles for the website, position papers, and thought leadership pieces about relevant topics in data ethics, for dissemination online.
• Actively contribute to the development and growth of IGS’ data ethics offering
• Seek out new opportunities and identify new clients.

You will need the following skills
Ethical analysis and synthesis: You have formal training in ethical analysis and can apply this to a broad range of literature, data, and other information. You can rapidly interpret complex material and draw out what is most salient, towards using these for making clear recommendations to inform decisions, even where this may challenge other ethical assumptions held. You follow developments in data ethics and use these to inform your work.

Knowledge of ethical theories: You have formal training in ethical theories and can deploy these in weighing up competing ethical demands and considerations. You demonstrate the ability to critically evaluate and weigh up ethical obligations in tensions, for example between rights of individuals to privacy on one hand, and mutual obligations to promoting societal benefits that may follow from uses and applications of personal data on the other.

Knowledge of data ethics, broadly conceived: Encompassing ethics of data governance, sharing, handling; ethics in machine learning and AI. You have formal training in or have carried out research in data ethics, broadly conceived. You are aware of cutting-edge developments data ethics research and understand the unique ethical implications of machine learning and AI, for instance, its consequences for informed consent processes.

Understanding of the relation between ethics and law: From your training, you have a working understanding of how the law and ethics relate, intersect, and differ. You can critically evaluate the ethical benefits or shortcomings of particular legal standards and you can provide clear, perspicuous analysis of instances where it does not follow from something being legal that it is also necessarily ethical. You can deploy this understanding in your work with IGS clients.

Understanding of the principles of data privacy and protection: You have a working knowledge of principles of legislation that apply to data handling and governance, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (DPA). You understand standard data and AI ethics approaches and frameworks in the public and private sectors, and you can provide guidance for ethical dilemmas lying outside the remit of regulation.

Communication: You are adept at communicating at all levels, in particular translating complex and subtle ethical analysis about technical aspects of data governance to those without formal training in ethics. You can communicate effectively across organisational and technical boundaries, you can articulate and defend IGS’ position on data ethics issues, to promote trust in the company’s advice, and you can respond effectively to challenges to your advice.

Independent and team working: You are adept at working independently and within a team. You demonstrate that you can both show initiative and leadership, taking responsibility for decisions, while also being collegiate in your approach to helping IGS meet its clients needs. There may be periods in the first year where you need to lead work independently of daily oversight from the Head of Data Ethics, which will require both of these two aptitudes.

Problem solving and training: You can identify problems for clients, analysing their situation to provide the appropriate solution. You can develop data ethics tools, e.g. frameworks, guidance, policies, and translate theoretical principles into practice. You can capture and translate client needs into deliverables. You can use your formal knowledge to provide training in data ethics to clients, where upskilling them in this respect is part of what they need.

The perks
• Annual bonus.
• Private medical insurance.
• Pension scheme.
• Central London offices.
• Free refreshments at the office.
• Social events.
• Excellent career prospects as part of a dynamic, progressive consultancy outfit.
• Helping clients to realise the potential of their data and how to use it to benefit society.
• Enabling the NHS and leading universities to conduct cutting-edge research for improving patients’ lives.
• Ongoing professional training and development to help you fulfil your potential throughout your career with IGS.

Academic qualifications required
Ideally you have a PhD or will be shortly to receive the award following submission of your thesis. Your PhD should be located somewhere across the broad field of data ethics, ideally in philosophy, applied ethics, bioethics, or the social sciences.
Consideration will also be given to exceptional candidates holding an MA or MSc in one of these areas, dependent on demonstrating a depth and breadth of theoretical