JOB BAND: E
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full‑time
DEPARTMENT: BBC Group Strategy and Transformation
LOCATION: Salford
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £80,000 – £90,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
The Lead Data Scientist will help the BBC make practical use of AI tools and systems to solve business problems and help internal teams work effectively and efficiently. This role is part of the BBC’s Generative AI Programme and collaborates closely with project managers, data scientists, analysts, domain experts and technical teams to design, build and hand over AI solutions to scale across the business.
YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT
* Design and develop models, pipelines and evaluation approaches that support high‑quality AI piloting and transition to successful handover for scaling.
* Lead the technical delivery of data science work across multiple projects, ensuring solutions are robust, secure and outcome‑aligned.
* Build and refine evaluation harnesses and testing approaches to assess performance, quality, reliability and suitability for real‑world use.
* Work closely with editorial leads, project managers, data engineers, analysts and domain experts to translate requirements into practical, well‑evidenced technical solutions.
* Guide data approaches across the team, providing leadership, challenge and support to maintain high standards of delivery and continuous improvement.
* Contribute to how generative AI is adopted and stewarded, ensuring work is ethical, responsible and consistent with BBC values.
* Help establish scalable ways of working, balancing experimentation with rigour, governance and operational resilience.
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
* Extensive experience developing, deploying and operationalising data science and machine learning solutions in complex organisations.
* Experience working effectively in multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with engineering, delivery, research and design colleagues.
* Demonstrable ability to guide technical direction, influence decisions and support the development of others through constructive leadership.
* Strong judgement in applying data science and emerging GenAI methods responsibly, with focus on quality, security, governance and ethics.
* Proficiency in Python and strong engineering practices; experience with Generative AI and agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, PydanticAI) and managed AI services (Bedrock, Azure), CI/CD pipelines and AI‑assisted development tools.
* Experience working in broadcast, media, start‑up or research environments.
* Contributions to published technical documents or thought leadership in your area of expertise.
* Experience building evaluation harnesses for generative AI systems, including defining success criteria, designing test sets, and implementing quantitative metrics and qualitative review processes.
* Familiarity with agentic orchestration patterns, multi‑agent architectures, tool/function calling and memory or retrieval.
We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio‑economic background, religion or belief.
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