Data Scientist

The opportunity:

ICF supports governments and organisations on challenges in areas such as energy, the environment, health and public policy. Our data science team works with subject matter experts to turn evidence and data into practical solutions for clients in the UK and EU.

You will be the first data scientist in our India team. At first, you will meet specialist teams, identify valuable use cases and build focused proofs of concept that demonstrate what data science and AI can do. As these relationships mature, you will help develop our ability to deliver data science and AI solutions across client projects, working with the wider data science team from discovery through implementation. Knowledge of energy would help, initiative, technical breadth and the ability to earn trust across disciplines are central to the role.

What you will do

• Meet colleagues across practice areas to understand their work, identify specific use cases and agree what a useful result would look like.
• Initially, scope and demonstrate focused proofs of concept, choosing suitable methods from statistical analysis and forecasting to machine learning and language models.
• Explain methods, limitations and potential value clearly to specialists and nontechnical colleagues. Use their feedback to improve the solution and build confidence in the teams services.
• Assess data quality, feasibility, privacy and delivery needs, and define the evidence needed to take a prototype further.
• As demand grows, design and deliver data science and AI solutions across projects with the wider team, from modelling and evaluation to integration, documentation and adoption. Contribute to proposals and client presentations.
• Establish reusable ways of working and help turn early demonstrations into a sustainable pipeline of well-defined client work.

What you will bring

• Hands-on experience in Python for analysis and modelling, including common data and machine learning libraries, ability to use SQL to extract, join and check data.
• Sound grounding in statistics and machine learning, including regression or classification, forecasting, validation, baseline comparisons and appropriate performance measures.
• Practical familiarity with using large language models in analysis or prototyping, including prompting, checking outputs against evidence and recognising privacy, accuracy and reliability risks.
• Experience preparing imperfect data, building reproducible analyses and writing maintainable code with version control and testing.
• Ability to take an ambiguous question from discovery to a working demonstration, explain assumptions and uncertainty, and judge whether a solution is worth developing for operational use.
• Confidence working independently and engaging stakeholders across teams, clear written and spoken English for technical and nontechnical audiences.
• A relevant degree or equivalent practical experience in a quantitative field.

Useful additional experience

• Experience in energy, utilities, climate or environmental policy, particularly applied analysis with domain experts.
• Experience in consulting, public policy research or client-facing delivery, familiarity with cloud platforms, APIs, data pipelines or deployment.
• Experience building AI agents or applications that connect language models to data and tools, such as retrieval-based systems. We can train someone with strong core skills.

How we work

As the first data scientist in our India team, you will have the opportunity to shape how our established data science and AI services grow there. You will work alongside colleagues with a wide range of technical and subject expertise, tackle varied client challenges, and see promising ideas develop into project work. We will support your career development with ongoing training and opportunities to deepen both your technical and consulting skills.