Senior Scientist

About the role

The SAMRC’s Office of the Vice President is hiring a Senior Scientist to lead epidemiological and analytical work on rheumatic heart disease. The position supports strategic research objectives through data management, modelling, publications, stakeholder engagement and capacity development over a two‑year fixed‑term.

Key responsibilities

• Coordinate data acquisition, manage data‑sharing agreements and perform dataset linkages.
• Extract, clean, validate, merge and transform large health datasets for analysis.
• Conduct descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, disease modelling and trend estimation.
• Perform literature reviews and quantitative evidence synthesis.
• Prepare scientific papers, technical reports, policy briefs, figures and tables.
• Present findings at conferences, workshops and stakeholder meetings.
• Mentor students, interns and junior researchers; support grant writing and collaborative projects.
• Monitor project deliverables, maintain documentation and contribute to progress reports.

Required profile

• Master’s degree in Health Sciences or Data Sciences (or PhD candidate with substantial progress).
• At least 3 years of experience in data science/analytics and a record of 5 publications, with 3 as first or senior author.
• Successful contribution to a grant of at least R100 000 and supervision of at least two postgraduate students to graduation.
• Experience translating research into policy or practice, and exposure to budgeting and risk management.
• Advantageous: PhD or MBChB, 5 years relevant experience, HPCSA registration (if clinician).

Required skills

• Data acquisition and management.
• Data cleaning, validation and transformation.
• Statistical analysis and epidemiological modelling.
• Literature review and quantitative evidence synthesis.
• Scientific writing and research dissemination.