Senior Research Scientist; Mental Health

Senior Research Scientist (Mental Health)

Department: Professional Client Services

Location: Remote - London, UK

Surgo Health is a Public Benefit Corporation building the world’s most comprehensive and insightful AI-powered data platform that reveals the why behind people’s behaviors. We uncover the unseen drivers of health - people’s beliefs, barriers, and behaviors - and transform that intelligence into scalable products that enable healthcare organizations to drive impact, reduce costs, and advance inclusion. From improving clinical trial design to optimizing care delivery and public health strategies, our solutions help decision-makers act on what truly shapes health outcomes.

By revealing the human side of healthcare, we’re making it more personal, precise, and effective - for everyone.

As a Senior Research Scientist, you will be the scientific engine driving the implementation of Surgo’s flagship UK Youth Wellbeing Project. Sitting at the intersection of research, data science, and behavioural science, you will take primary responsibility for executing the analytical work streams, managing day‑to‑day research delivery, and translating complex data into actionable insights that shape real‑world decisions across the UK mental health ecosystem.

You will lead hands‑on analytical work, design methods, work directly with data, and generate high‑quality evidence, including insights derived from conversational AI tools, while coordinating closely with cross‑functional colleagues to ensure our outputs are rigorous, timely, and grounded in lived experience. This is a high‑impact, multi‑method programme aimed at uncovering the behavioural, social, and structural drivers of youth wellbeing in the UK, and you will play a central role in turning evidence into meaningful change.

• Love rolling up your sleeves and leading complex analyses to understand the why behind young people’s mental‑health experiences.
• Bring a strong grasp of the UK mental‑health and wellbeing data landscape and an appetite to innovate with new methods and data sources.
• Enjoy bringing methodological rigor (across quantitative, qualitative, and AI‑driven approaches) to messy, multidimensional problems, and take pride in ensuring analyses, instruments, and insights are grounded in evidence and robust scientific practice.
• Get energy from working at the intersection of science and action, producing insights that partners can use immediately to drive change.
• Communicate clearly and confidently with both technical teams and non‑technical partners.
• Want to lead delivery within a fast‑moving, entrepreneurial environment where analytical creativity and rigor matter.

• Design and oversee the research strategy and analytical roadmap for the UK Youth Wellbeing Project, including survey research, narrative analysis, quantitative modelling, segmentation, and triangulation across data sources.
• Identify opportunities to advance the science, in particular leveraging natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), causal inference, and AI‑based methods for analysing both quantitative and qualitative data.

• Conduct rigorous literature reviews and lead the development of behavioural‑science‑informed research instruments, using Surgo’s LLM‑powered tools.
• Lead high‑complexity analyses on mental health, wellbeing, behavioural drivers, and system‑level factors affecting UK young people.
• Build and validate models for analysing structured and unstructured data.
• Apply strong inferential and statistical reasoning to ensure our insights are scientifically sound and grounded in evidence across multiple datasets.
• Analyse data generated from conversational AI tools used with young people (e.g., structured dialogues, open‑text responses, narrative prompts), ensuring rigorous methodological handling, bias assessment, and validity checks.

• Translate analytical outputs into crisp, actionable insights that funders, policymakers, and service providers can understand and use.
• Co‑develop strategic…