Neil started his career in the Civil Service in 2001, becoming a professionally accredited statistician in 2003 following achieving a first class honours degree in Mathematics with the Open University. Neil joined the Department for Work and Pensions in 2004, where his first role was to build a billion record pseudonymised individual level database, linking benefit and employment spells for all UK adults that had been on welfare benefits at some point since 1998. Neil also spent some time as lead analyst on disability employment issues, before becoming policy lead for specialist disability employment, and disability benefits. In 2012, Neil became the Department for Work and Pensions Deputy Head of Profession for Statistics, and became DWP’s temporary Chief Data Officer in 2016, moving briefly to the Office for National Statistics to run Business Data Operations, and Student Migration statistics, before moving to his current role, as the Department for Education’s Chief Data Officer