Senior Data Scientist Technical Exercise
APIs: As well as providing content for people, GOV.UK also provides content for computers via APIs. The content API is your primary data source for demonstrating your data wrangling (reading, cleaning, processing) and data science skills with Python.
Data: You can (but you don’t have to) complement the content data derived from the API using data from anywhere on the web.
Tasks:
- Using data from the GOV.UK content API, demonstrate your data wrangling and data science skills using Python and produce a 10 minute presentation (you’ll be timed) on your findings (the APIs are rate limited, we do not need you to demonstrate working with large volumes of data). To make use of the content API you need to know the base paths for the content you want to look-up. To give you a leg-up we provide a csv of base paths (check for errors!), the content of which contains mentions of ‘coronavirus’ or ‘covid’, sorted by “popularity” descending. (Note: you don’t have to use these pages).
Expectation: You are required to demonstrate: ● a general understanding of how to wrangle data from the GOV.UK content API and apply some data science techniques ● intellectual curiosity and story-telling ability
We do not expect an exhaustive analysis of all content but we would like to gain insight into your technical abilities and how you approach an exploratory problem. You should expect to take around 7-8 hours to complete this exercise; it’s OK to say, “given more time I would have done it like this” or have slides describing next steps. We want you to demonstrate some of the core data science key skills described in the Analysis Function Career Framework. Try to come up with an overarching theme or data story to tie everything together. For inspiration you can check out the GOV.UK roadmap. Audience: You will have a mixed interview panel, made up of the Head of Data and Insight, the lead data scientist and Data Labs senior product manager. They will be assessing your technical skills as well as your data storytelling abilities, both of which are required for this role. Code will be reviewed by a Data Scientist beforehand and we might ask you some questions about it.
At the interview: You will have 10 minutes to present to the panel and you may be asked questions about your analysis following your presentation (5 mins). You can volunteer reflections and what you might do next after the presentation. You’ll present remotely on Google meets by sharing your screen.
The 45 minute interview will follow immediately after and you will be assessed against the Success Profile questions. The following behaviours are the most relevant for the role:
● Leadership ● Seeing the big picture ● Communicating and influencing (assessed as part of the presentation) ● Making effective decisions ● Developing self and others
Scoring: So you know how much effort to put into the tech exercise and practicing for questions.
Candidates can get: ● ⅜ of the total marks for the tech exercise and presentation ● 1/8 for a technical question ● 4/8 for behaviour questions
Interview technique tips: You should consider learning about Success Profiles and practicing your interview technique. The Situation, Task, Action, Result and Reflection (STARR) framework can be useful for structuring your answers. The highest scoring candidate that passes the interview will be offered the role. The whole process can take a month. Success profiles: In the Civil Service, we use our Success Profiles (there is lots of good stuff on the web describing these: Department for Transport has produced some useful videos Strengths & Behaviours, Experience & Technical). For each role we advertise we consider what you will need to demonstrate to be successful. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, drives up performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We will be looking at your experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to the specific job role. For this role we will be assessing your ability, strength, experience, technical/specialist skill and behaviours.