Principal Data Scientist

Job Band: D

Contract Type: Permanent, Full-time

Department: BBC Product Group, Discoverability (Search)

Location: London / Newcastle / Salford / Glasgow – Hybrid working with 1 day a week expected in office base location.

Salary: £72,000 - £82,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

We're happy to discuss flexible working. If you'd like to, please indicate your preference in the application – though there's no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

Purpose Of The Role

The BBC has been serving audiences online for decades, across key products such as BBC iPlayer. As we evolve to deliver more personalised content and experiences, Data Science is at the heart of that transformation.

As a team, we use ML / AI to enrich our content and power personalised experiences for millions of audience members. We’re looking for a Principal Data Scientist to join the Product Group.

Why Join The Team

As Principal Data Scientist you’ll play a hands-on role in building machine learning products at BBC scale. Working as part of a highly cross-functional team, you’ll help overcome the challenges of deploying ML in production.

You’ll have the opportunity to get involved with the wider data science community, both at the BBC and externally. We hope you’ll be enthusiastic about sharing your knowledge and growing others.

Your Key Responsibilities And Impact

You’ll use your technical skills to deliver value to BBC audiences, blending significant breadth and depth of data science expertise.

• You’ll have impact within your immediate team and beyond, across the wider BBC, instrumental in developing scalable ML products.
• You’ll bring significant experience of being an effective contributor in a cross-functional team, working with others to overcome the challenges of delivering ML in production.
• You’ll be responsible for using your extensive knowledge of machine learning algorithms to solve complex problems effectively.
• You’ll join the wider BBC Data Science community, with internal and external opportunities to get involved, share your knowledge and shape the ecosystem.

Your Skills And Experience

Essential Criteria:

• A strong understanding of data science and machine learning techniques, including recent advances and their applications for implementation in a production environment.
• Strong working knowledge of data science best practice, including working with cloud services and strong coding skills, particularly in Python, including knowledge of code management and deployment.
• A proven track record of delivering value in production.
• The ability to contribute effectively in a cross-functional team, including the ability to prioritise and work in a structured manner to ensure timely delivery while balancing quality, cost and speed.
• Ability to clearly communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences, both regarding short-term decisions and longer-term strategy.

Desired But Not Required:

If you can bring some of these skills and experience, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply.

• Strong understanding and experience of development and productionisation of data science products in the Search domain, for example, information retrieval.
• Strong understanding and experience of experimentation within data science.
• Experience with model lifecycle management and MLOps, particularly within AWS.
• Experience of supporting other Data Scientist/s with their technical work to deliver value in production.

Disclaimer

This is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.

For any general queries, please contact: [email protected]

Redeployment

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.