Senior Data Scientist

JOB DETAILS

BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent – Full Time
DEPARTMENT: Data Science – Media Tech
LOCATION: Salford, Glasgow, Newcastle, London - Hybrid
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £60,000 - £70,000 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. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. 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 our flagship products – BBC iPlayer, Sounds, News, Sport, and more – we educate, inform, and entertain millions of people every single day.
We are now accelerating our shift towards experiences that are shaped around our audiences: more personal, more relevant, and more responsive to their needs.
At the heart of this transformation is the Recommendations team. We design and build large scale ML/AI systems that help audiences discover the right content at the right moment. Our work already powers experiences across the BBC, including personalised recommendations on iPlayer and BBC Sounds.
We’re now looking for a Senior Data Scientist to help us in this next stage of our journey.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM
As a Senior Data Scientist, you’ll play a key role in building the recommender systems used by millions of people each day. You’ll be a hands on contributor – prototyping, experimenting, and implementing technical approaches for complex ML solutions at true BBC scale.
Working in a cross-functional team, you’ll partner closely with engineers, product managers, and data scientists to deliver high impact systems that help audiences connect with the BBC’s breadth and depth of content.
Beyond your immediate team, you’ll be an active member of the wider BBC Data Science community. You’ll have opportunities to share your work, influence the development of data science and AI practices across the organisation, and engage with external communities to continue your own learning and development.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT 
•    You’ll use your technical skills to deliver value to BBC audiences, blending a 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 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 apply your knowledge of machine learning algorithms to solve complex user and business problems in a robust and scalable way.
•    You’ll join the wider BBC Data Science community, with internal and external opportunities to get involved and share your knowledge. 

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL

•    Extensive hands-on experience in data science and machine learning, with a proven track record of contributing to technical machine learning projects. 
•    Experience developing and deploying information retrieval systems, ideally recommender systems.
•    Strong coding skills (Python), with knowledge of code management and deployment.
•    Ability to clearly communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences.
•    Ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team, including the ability to prioritise and work in a structured manner.

DESIRABLE
•    Experience with model lifecycle management and MLOps, including model deployment, versioning and monitoring.
•    Good knowledge of cloud services, ideally AWS.
•    Knowledge and understanding of best practices such as testing, code management and deployment.
•    Mentorship and/or supervision of other team members.
•    A proven track record of delivering value in production.

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.

This role is currently advertised as internal only. Freelancers are eligible to apply if they have been on a Worker Contract (more info here ) continuously for 6 months. If less than 6 months (or they have had a break of 3 weeks or more between engagements), they must seek Divisional HR approval to apply.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.