Senior Data Scientist - GenAI

JOB BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-time
DEPARTMENT: BBC Group Strategy and Transformation
LOCATION: Salford
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.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Senior Data Scientist will help the BBC make practical use of AI tools and systems to solve business problems and help our internal teams work effectively and efficiently.

The role is in the BBC's Generative AI Programme and will collaborate closely with project managers, data scientists, analysts, domain experts, and the BBC's technical teams. The Senior Data Scientist will help evaluate emerging AI tools, assess whether domain data is fit for purpose, design and pilot solutions to clearly defined problems, and build the testing methods that show what works and where the limits are; working in ways that are responsible, evidence led and aligned with the BBC's values.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT

• Support the evaluation of new AI tooling, including agentic tooling, helping to assess performance, reliability and practical value in BBC use cases.
• Design and develop approaches, pilots and solutions that address clearly defined domain problems using generative AI, agentic and automation techniques.
• Build evaluation methods and testing approaches that help BBC teams understand the efficacy, limitations and risks of emerging tools and solutions.
• Work closely with domain experts, data engineers, analysts, researchers, designers and delivery colleagues to translate requirements into practical, well evidenced data solutions.
• Contribute to the development of high quality, secure and resilient data science assets that support delivery of pilots as well as more scalable implementation where appropriate.
• Present findings, trade offs and recommendations clearly to a range of stakeholders, helping to inform decisions on tool adoption and solution design.
• Ensure work is delivered in line with the BBC's organisational values, security requirements and responsible approach to AI innovation.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience of developing and applying data science or GenAI approaches to practical business, operational or user problems, working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams and with the discipline to produce reliable, well tested code.
• Strong analytical capability, including experience of evaluating models, tools or experiments and drawing clear, evidence based conclusions.
• Ability to communicate findings, limitations and trade offs clearly to both technical and non technical stakeholders.
• Good judgement in applying data science methods responsibly, with an understanding of quality, governance, security and ethical considerations.
• Strong engineering practices including writing clean, well tested and maintainable code, proficiency in Python, CI/CD pipelines, and demonstrable use of AI assisted development tools to improve code quality and delivery pace.
• Experience working in broadcast, media, start up or research environments.
• A strong academic background or research credentials in data science, machine learning or a related discipline.
• Experience building with Generative AI frameworks (e.g. LangChain, LangGraph, PydanticAI) and managed AI services (e.g. Bedrock, Azure).
• Familiarity with agentic orchestration patterns, including multi agent architectures, tool/function calling, and memory or retrieval augmentation.
• Familiarity with enterprise automation toolsets (e.g. Microsoft Power Platform, Copilot Studio) and an understanding of how they complement bespoke AI solutions in large organisations.

Disclaimer

This job description 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.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Recruitment 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.

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.

Disability confident

We are a disability confident employer. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process, or to carry out this role, please contact us via email and we'd be happy to discuss:

Diversity, inclusion & belonging strategy

We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, so all our employees feel that they can belong, thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to join us. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio economic background, religion and/or belief.

Company information

BBC Group and Public Services, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom, W1A 1AA. BBC Studios Distribution Limited, company no: , registered address: 1 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, United Kingdom W12 7FA.