Team Lead - Field Epidemiology

The role of the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate is to protect the people of Scotland from infectious and environmental hazards; enable high-quality clinical and public health knowledge, research and innovation; and support improvement of clinical and public health practice by using audits at a national and local level.
**The Post: **
An exciting and novel opportunity has arisen within the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate of PHS, where we are creating a Field Epidemiology Team (FET). The FET will provide a national service to support NHS Boards, other partners and the PHS national response to new health protection incidents. These include outbreaks of infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2 variants but also a range of other pathogens and public health incidents including environmental or chemical incidents. FET will be part of the Environment and Emergency Response Division at PHS.
The post-holder will have the opportunity to create Scotland’s first Field Epidemiology Team at a time of strategic importance, in this pandemic recovery phase. It will add to a current network of health protection teams across Scotland, providing support and training in a range of key areas for the preparation, investigation and management of outbreaks and incidents. This will be an exciting, fast-paced and dynamic post which will require scientific and epidemiological expertise, leadership, programme development abilities, data science capacity, management experience and excellent network-building skills.
The post-holder will be an enthusiastic, adaptive individual who will support the integration of national and local incident and outbreak work of the highest quality for Scotland.
The Candidate:
You will be responsible for creating and developing a new team and work collaboratively with colleagues within PHS and across sector stakeholders, in particular with local Health Protection Teams. You will lead on the epidemiologic analyses of the data, coordinating advice and guidance on specialist aspects with PHS topic teams, where relevant. 
You will have strong communication skills, as you will have responsibility for interpreting and preparing timely investigative and scientific reports; publications will be encouraged as a means of sharing learning. You must be incisive, decisive and collaborative, as rapid assessment and decision-making leading to implementation of agreed actions will be required.
​​​​​​​The successful candidate will be required to undergo a PVG Scheme/Disclosure Scotland check. Any candidate who has lived/worked overseas for more than 12 months in the preceding 5 years will also be required to provide a criminal record check from the appropriate overseas agency.
Location and Working Pattern:
The post will be based in Glasgow or Edinburgh PHS premises. However, it should be noted that PHS is currently in the process of relocating from Meridian Court to another Glasgow City Centre location later this year. 
PHS operate a hybrid working model with a mixture of working at home and days in the office each week. 
There will be an expectation to travel to local areas for some meetings and events.  
Work pattern - Monday to Friday, 37.5 hours per week.
This post will be included in the out-of-hours rota and will be recompensed under Agenda for Change terms and conditions. 
During times of public health emergency, or other urgent business need, you may be required on a temporary basis to work your normal contracted working hours over 7 days including weekends, in order to meet the needs of the service.
It is a condition of this employment that you must live and remain a resident within the UK for the post in which you will be employed with PHS.