Junior Program employee Data team (0.8 - 1.0 FTE)

Are you passionate about enhancing the reuse of health and life sciences data for policy, research, and innovation? Does the idea of increasing data findability and reusability to enable data driven health and life sciences inspire you? Are you excited by the prospect of collaborating with national and international stakeholders to build a learning healthcare system? If so, Health-RI has the perfect opportunity for you! 

About Health-RI 

Health-RI is a non-profit organisation that realizes a health data infrastructure for research, innovation and policy development in the Netherlands. Health and life sciences data are being underutilised in the current fragmented landscape since these are not easily findable or accessible. Therefore, the Health-RI Data Team focusses on making metadata of data(sets) available for re-use in the National Health Data Catalogue. This process, the so-called onboarding process, increases the availability of data for reuse of data for research, policy an innovation. Availability of health and life science data is important to enable researchers, healthcare professionals and companies to conduct better data-driven research and healthcare innovation, thus contributing to improving the health of citizens and patients.  

We work towards enabling a learning healthcare system by promoting FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles. As the national coordination hub, we foster collaboration across all stakeholders in the data-driven health and life sciences ecosystem, support researchers, and participate in (inter)national initiatives to ensure global interoperability.  

Health-RI obtained funding from the Dutch Government to realize these ambitions in the coming years, with the goal of achieving a sustainable design and financing of the health data infrastructure in the Netherlands. To strengthen our team, we are seeking a colleague with a background in life sciences and health data to support the Health-RI onboarding process of the National Health Data Catalogue. 

Your role 

We are looking for an enthusiastic Junior Program employee to join our Data Team and contribute to the development of the national health data infrastructure. In this role, you will coordinate and support FAIRification guidance and workflows, and coordinate making data findable in the National Health Data Catalogue. You will work and collaborate closely with other teams across Health-RI ensuring a multidisciplinary approach. Additionally, you will actively engage with different stakeholders and data experts from across the Life Sciences and Health domain, such as University Medical Centers and cardiovascular and oncology research initiatives, to support and guide requests related to finding and accessing health and life sciences data. This position offers strong opportunities for professional growth, allowing you to build the skills, experience, and network needed to grow into a more senior role in the future. 

Your tasks 

• Coordinate and monitor progress: Drive the adoption of the national health data infrastructure and the National Health Data Catalogue by actively coordinating and contributing to FAIRification workflows and the onboarding process to ensure alignment among all involved stakeholders.
• Stakeholder management: Identify user needs and align activities through close collaboration with researchers, metadata specialists, implementation and user experience teams across University Medical Centres, technical universities, funding bodies, and other key partners.
• Outreach and support: Collaborate with users and developers of the national health data infrastructure to facilitate, present and communicate about workshops or events that improve FAIRification workflows and the onboarding process, share knowledge and demonstrate best practices.
• Documentation and guidelines: Develop comprehensive documentation, instructional materials and best-practices guidelines that enhance support for the activities of both data providers and requesters.
• Use case implementation: Guide researchers of domain-specific life sciences and health use cases, such as the cardiovascular and oncology domain nodes in implementing and performing the onboarding process. Facilitate that data, biomaterials, and images deriving from registries, bio- and databanks are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) and suited for re-use of data-driven solutions in research, policy, and life sciences and health innovation.
• Internal organisational alignment: Ensure internal organisational alignment within Health-RI by actively collaborating with cross-functional teams and working groups. e.g., Services, ELSI, Architecture, International.  

Your profile 

We are looking for someone with:  

• Educational background: A degree in health sciences, molecular life sciences, Data Science, bioinformatics or a related field, preferably at the Msc level.
• FAIR (meta)data practices: Familiarity with FAIRification workflows, (meta)data management, interoperability, standards, tools, and resources aligned with FAIR data principles is a plus.
• Project Management skills: Hands-on experience or project management skills, with the ability to deliver results within tight deadlines. Experience with Agile frameworks is preferred, ideally within the Life Sciences & Health domain. Expertise in related areas such as translational or clinical research, epidemiology, population or (clinical) biobank activities and data management is a plus.
• Technical expertise: Solid understanding of the technical, ethical, and legal considerations surrounding the (re)use of data for scientific research, innovation and policy. Experience with GitHub and basic programming skills, scientific writing, educational material development, and documentation is a strong advantage.
• Soft skills: Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills. You are a creative thinker with a can-do mentality that can thrive in both independent and team settings and have experience with stakeholder management.
• Languages: Excellent proficiency of Dutch and English, both spoken and written. 

Our offer  

We offer you a job in a young and dynamic scale-up organisation. A place where you can really contribute to social impact. Our office is located in the Beatrix Building in Utrecht, within walking distance of Utrecht Central Station.  

You can work hybrid, although we do expect you to come to the office more than half the time. You will be compensated for travel and for working from home. We offer you an employment contract for the duration of 1 year with the prospect of extension. We have a 38-hour working week, 232 holiday hours (almost 6 weeks) when working full-time, are affiliated for pension with ABP and have an 8% holiday allowance in May and a year-end bonus of 8.3%. Based on education and experience, the position is graded in scale 9 of the NFU CAO. 

Procedure  

Are you the Junior Program employee Data team we are looking for? Then apply now and send your CV with cover letter by June 3, by e-mail to recruitment@health-ri.nl.  

After closing, we will make an initial selection based on the responses received. The procedure consists of two job interviews, checking references, an assessment if applicable and the ability to provide a Certificate of Conduct (VOG). This procedure ends with an employment interview. We will retain your details for up to three months after the closing date. 

For more information about the vacancy, please contact recruitment@health-ri.nl and for substantive questions about the work please contact Robin Verjans at robin.verjans@health-RI.nl. 

Acquisition in response to this vacancy is not appreciated.