About the role

Join Us as a Data Scientist in a Unique Knowledge Transfer Partnership!

Are you an ambitious Data Scientist with strong programming skills in Java and/or Python? Do you have a passion for knowledge representation, such as knowledge graphs and semantic web technologies? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you!

Why This Role is Special

As a KTP Associate, you will be at the forefront of a unique academic-commercial partnership between the University of Leicester and rradar. This collaboration aims to develop an innovative SaaS system that automatically identifies and quantifies risk scenarios in businesses, targeting applications across business insurance brokering, compliance, and risk management.

What You Can Expect

Impactful Work: Lead and deliver a strategic R&D project that directly impacts the business, becoming a champion of real change.
Academic Support: Receive input and support from an academic team with specialist knowledge and experience relevant to the project.
Training and Development: Benefit from a £2,000 per annum training budget tailored to your personal development needs, along with two free residential management training courses at the beginning of the project.
Career Progression: Deliver high-impact outcomes within a business while learning at the same time, significantly contributing to your long-term career progression.
Modern Facilities on Campus: Access to state-of-the-art campus facilities, including libraries, research labs, Sports Centre (gyms, pools, saunas, spas, classes, courts active life advisors, health checks, etc) and recreational areas
Location Benefits: Leicester is a vibrant city with excellent transport links, local amenities, and a rich cultural heritage, making it an attractive place to live and work

About rradar

rradar (www.rradar.com) is a £25m turnover legal services group providing insurance companies' clients with risk management services. With 265 employees, rradar is continually growing across key strategic office locations - Hull, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and Leicester where you will be based. The company offers a technology-driven, preventative educational strategy that makes the law more accessible and affordable, supporting people to run better businesses. rradar comprises a diverse team of experts in law, education, technology, and content, driven by imagination and innovation. By integrating smart technology into legal services, rradar is transforming risk management with tools like rradargrace, rradarstation, and rradarreport.

What to expect:

• Freedom to think big – A space to share bold ideas and bring them to life.
• Opportunities to grow – The chance to learn, contribute, and make a meaningful impact.
• A strong team – Collaboration with supportive, driven professionals.

Guided by core values:

• Unity – Success comes from working together.
• Authentic – Integrity and respect shape all interactions.
• Relentless – A commitment to delivering results and building trust.
• Pioneering – Leading through smart, original thinking.

Diversity is central to rradar’s success. The team reflects a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, with a commitment to inclusion, removing barriers, and publishing diversity data to continuously improve.

About Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs)

For 50 years, KTPs have been helping businesses innovate for growth by connecting enterprises with the expertise to help deliver their innovation ideas. A KTP could be the perfect launchpad for your career, helping you manage a challenging project central to an enterprise’s strategic development and long-term growth. You’ll ‘own’ your project, linked to both a university and an enterprise whose experienced teams will provide you with full support. This is a chance to deliver impact and shape your career, opening doors within both academia and industry.

Benefits of Being a KTP Associate

Engagement: An interesting and challenging role enabling you to engage with a variety of leaders and innovators in the cultural, research consultancy, and policy sectors.
Supervision: Supervision from world-leading academics and sectoral experts.
Resources: Full access to the University’s and TAA’s resources to complete the project, with project support from the University’s KTP Office.
Training: £2,000 per year for training and personal development (in addition to salary).
Management Training: Management training and mentoring from Innovate UK.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Impact and Knowledge Exchange: Manage a key, strategic project within rradar Ltd (with support from academic and company supervisors), ensuring that all defined targets and outputs are met within the timeframe. Facilitate the transfer of knowledge between the University of Leicester and rradar Ltd. Engage with other employees and engineers to ensure that the knowledge transferred is properly embedded and exploited. Prepare and present progress reports at project team meetings. Represent the partnership at conferences and exhibitions. Take part in training and development activities.

Research and Innovation: Design and implement models for a knowledge graph as part of an R&D team. Research methods and techniques for populating the knowledge graph. Develop models or algorithms to facilitate risk identification and assessment. Evaluate and verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the model and associated methodologies. Design and implement a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed system.

About you

Internal and External Relationships

You will be based at the premises of rradar Ltd in Leicester. You will be directly supervised by a Company Supervisor on a daily basis and will also receive mentoring from an Academic Supervisor as required by the post. You will be responsible for ensuring that appropriate information exchange is maintained between the company and academic partner.

Planning and Organising

You will be working to the high-level workplan agreed with the funder from which you will develop a detailed action plan (with activities, outputs, Gantt chart, resource planning, risk assessment etc), adapting it as the project progresses.

Your will formally report progress against (and variations from) this plan every 4 months at a Project Board meeting of the partners.

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience

- PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Mathematics, Engineering or similar
- Programming proficiency in Java, (or Python)
- Good understanding of ML techniques and algorithms
- Good understanding of knowledge representation and graph models
- Understanding of insurance industry relevant to Risk Compliance Management.
- Demonstrated experience in managing projects from initiation to completion, ensuring deadlines, budgets, and quality standards are met

Skills, Abilities and Competencies

Essential

- Proactive and self-motivated, with the ability to work independently and take initiative
- Project management skills and business acumen.
- Machine Learning techniques.
- Proficiency in Python or Java programming.
- Excellent written and spoken English communication skills.
- Ability to communicate with a range of stakeholders with different levels of technical knowledge.
- Can demonstrate a deep enthusiasm for learning and experimenting with knowledge management systems/ data science and machine learning.
- Good understanding of object-oriented design principles.
- Able to present data in an easy-to-understand format which can be used to gain deeper insights into the topic of enquiry
- Ability to work as part of team but also be “Autonomous” when required.

Desirable

- Understanding of insurance industry relevant to risk management
- Working in a finance business environment, particularly one involving quantitative risk management.
- Understanding of graphs and graph transformations.
- Experience working with knowledge graphs, fine-tuning and adapting large pre-trained language models (LLMs) for domain-specific use cases
- Knowledge or hands-on experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures and frameworks.
- Ability to work within a diverse development team comprising of academics and industrial partners and the wherewithal to impart new knowledge to the company team, embedding it through paired working, training and relevant 'how to' documents.
- Customer liaison skills.

Additional information

Informal enquiries are welcomed and should be made to Professor Reiko Heckel on [email protected].

General enquiries on KTP can be made [email protected]

As part of the University’s ongoing commitment to professional development, this role will also be considered on a seconded basis for existing staff members. Please ensure this is discussed with your line manager prior to applying. More information regarding secondments can be found here.

The University of Leicester has been changing the world, and changing people’s lives, for 100 years. When you join us, you’ll become part of a community of Citizens of Change, which includes not only our staff and our current students but also thousands of Leicester graduates around the world.

As a diverse and forward-thinking employer, we embed the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion into everything we do. That includes not just our core missions of teaching and research, but also our support for staff, students and our local community through our values of Inspiring, Impactful and Inclusive through our values of Inspiring, Impactful and Inclusive.

We’re committed to the wellbeing of all our staff and to the sustainability of our environment, on our campus and beyond. We offer a competitive salary package, excellent pension scheme and a generous annual leave allowance, along with opportunities to develop your career in a supportive and collaborative environment.