Package Description

Job Reference: 21155
Band: D
Salary: £69,000-£79000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
Contract type: Permanent
Location: London, Glasgow, Salford or Newcastle. This is a hybrid role, and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.

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.

Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.

Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.

Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care and gym. You can find out more about working at the BBC by selecting this link to our .

If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process, please contact the . For any general queries, please contact: .

Interview Process

2 stage interview process:
- A screening call (with the hiring manager) covering motivations for applying
- One 90-minute interview, comprising a technical presentation and some behavioural questions covering relevant competencies for the role (with the hiring manager plus a small panel)

Main Responsibilities

The role of Principal Data Scientist at the BBC is hands-on; you’ll use your technical skills to deliver value to BBC audiences. We are looking for individuals who value both breadth and depth of knowledge.

Principal Data Scientists at the BBC are expected to have impact within their immediate team and beyond, across the wider BBC. You’ll be instrumental in developing machine learning products at BBC scale. Not only will you become part of a cross-functional team, you will influence much of the day-to-day technical decision-making for the Product Growth data science team.

You’ll bring significant experience of being an effective team contributor and making use of your knowledge of different machine learning algorithms to solve complex problems. You’ll have a good understanding of data science best practices, and experience implementing effective ways of working in previous teams.

You’ll have the opportunity to get involved with the wider data science community, both at the BBC and externally. We’d love to see enthusiasm about sharing your knowledge and growing others.

Are you the right candidate

Essential criteria: 
• Strong understanding of data science and machine learning techniques, and their applications
• Excellent ability to communicate to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong coding skills, particularly in Python or R
• Good knowledge of data science modelling and evaluation best practices
• Good knowledge of code management and deployment best practices
• Good knowledge of working with cloud services for data science, e.g. AWS, and their practicalities

Desirable experience: 
• Proven track record of delivering value in production
• Ability to prioritise and work in a structured manner to ensure delivery in a timely fashion, balancing quality, cost, and speed
• Ability to contribute effectively in a cross-functional team
• Ability to steer day-to-day project work for other data scientists, and support the team in working effectively
• Experience with model lifecycle management and MLOps
• Excited about personal development and learning

You are encouraged to apply even if you don’t meet every one of the criteria above!

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons 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.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours .

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.