Data Manager at the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center

Department of Public Health
Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
University of Copenhagen

Are you skilled in data management and data governance? Do you have a passion for building, managing, and working with large data infrastructures? Are you familiar with the Danish national registries? And do you want to be part of a group of dynamic and diverse researchers at the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center? If so, please apply now and join us in conducting highly relevant research.

We are looking for a motivated and skilled data manager who has experience in working with large data sets. The work involves building and maintaining large data infrastructures based on complex data sets, including nationwide registers. It is a full-time position, starting 1 April 2026 or upon agreement.

About the Center
The data manager will be employed at the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, which aims to build a strong scientific foundation for understanding and acting on complex public-health challenges. The Center leverages multi-layered nationwide social and health data combined with an interdisciplinary fusion of methods spanning data science, epidemiology, ethnography, econometrics, and systems science. Our research focuses on the complex interplay of health, social, and environmental factors that shape individuals, families, and networks over time. Learn more about the Center and our research, vision, and values here.

About the Department
The Department of Public Health provides the scientific foundation for researchers and educators who aim to improve public health, both nationally and globally, and to create greater insight into the links between health, the individual, and society as well as the ethical, equity, and political implications. This is achieved through research, education, and engagement with stakeholders and the general public along with a broad multidisciplinary research agenda that addresses most aspects of public health at a high international level. More information about the Department of Public Health is available here.

About the position
The data manager will have a supportive and collaborative role in data management and data governance, working closely with relevant researchers at the Center and external collaborators. Responsibilities will primarily include building, documenting, and maintaining large-scale data infrastructures based on Danish registries and their linkage to major cohort studies. Research projects at the Center mainly involve life-course registry data spanning health, social, and environmental dimensions but may also include data from well-characterised cohort studies.

Most of the data manager’s work will be conducted via secure access to the servers at Statistics Denmark using the Department’s research machine: the Public Health Database. The data manager will work in close collaboration with other data managers at the Public Health Database to update and maintain this important data infrastructure at the Department of Public Health.

A central work task will be to govern the Danish Life Course (DANLIFE) study. DANLIFE is a large register-based study/infrastructure of over 2 million individuals. It is comprised of data from multiple health, social, and clinical registers, and one of the data manager’s roles will be to maintain, document, and expand it with data on, e.g., environmental and neighbourhood factors. The data manager will also be involved in building network structures – such as families within DANLIFE – by linking individuals to each other via identifiers. The DANLIFE study is used by many researchers and collaborators within and outside the Center, and the data manager will be a key contact person for the study. They will also be responsible for data security at the Center, including adherence to GDPR.

The data manager will also be an integral part of the SmartSleep project – a research project about smartphones, sleep, and mental health in adults based on a unique sample of varied data sources; these include questionnaire data, clinical data, register data, and tracking data from smartphones. 

As data manager at the Center, you will be able to influence many of your work tasks according to your interests and qualifications, and we will support you in developing and learning new approaches relevant to your position, e.g., creating interactive dashboards or integrating GIS and landscape methods into our complexity thinking – or whatever other qualifications and ideas that may arise through your collaboration with the researchers and our network at the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center.  

Profile and qualifications
We are looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic data manager who, in addition to the desired interests and expertise stated above, has the following skills and qualifications:

• experience in working with national registers at a Danish research machine at either Statistics Denmark, the Danish Health Data Authority, and/or the Genome Center    
• good interpersonal and social skills
• fluent in Danish, both written and spoken
• experience with project management, including the ability to maintain an overview and keep track of multiple ongoing tasks, strong follow-up skills, and a proactive approach to understanding how things work within a large organisation
• a computational background and preferably expertise in dealing with large and complex data sets in either SAS, R, phyton, or related programs
• an interest in complex-systems thinking or a curiosity to learn more about this approach to science
• knowledge of GDPR and data security would be a plus
• a background in epidemiology and public health, natural or data science, biostatistics, data science, or any related areas. Your actual background is not that important; it is more important that you are interested in registries and have a helpful and open approach to data management.

Place of employment
The place of employment is the Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen next to the city lakes in Central Copenhagen.

Terms of employment
The position is a full-time position (37 working hours weekly).
The starting date is 1 April 2026 or as soon as possible hereafter.

Employment will be in accordance with the provisions of the collective agreement between the Danish Ministry of Taxation and AC (the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations). The monthly salary will be based on the number of years of work experience (seniority) with the possibility to negotiate a salary supplement based on prior experiences and qualifications. The employer will pay an additional 18,07 % to your pension fund.

Questions
For further information regarding the position and the projects, please contact Center Director, Professor Naja Hulvej Rod: NAHURO@sund.ku.dk. For questions regarding the recruitment procedure, please contact HR at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences: SUND-HR-IFSV@sund.ku.dk

Application
Your application must include the following:

• Cover letter, including motivations for applying for this position (max. 1 page), written in Danish.
• Curriculum Vitae, including education, work/research experience, language skills, and any other skills relevant to the position
• A certified/signed copy of certificate(s) of education

Please submit your application by clicking on “Apply for position” below. 

Application deadline: February 8, 23:59 CET

 We reserve the right to reject material received after the deadline, and to reject applications that do not meet the abovementioned requirements.

The University of Copenhagen wishes to reflect the diversity of society and encourages all qualified candidates to apply regardless of their personal background.