BBC Hiring for Software Engineer (Data Scientist) Data Journalism – News Content Job at Birmingham, England Full Time

The Data Journalism team tackles big stories emanating from data sets in collaboration with journalists from across BBC News.

This advertised role is for a software engineer, also known as a data scientist some sectors/organisations. The attached generic job description is representative of the software engineer family of roles within all departments of the BBC.

This role requires a specific set of skills that are better described in main body of the job advert than by the generic description. Candidates will be assessed against the criteria described in the job advert rather than against those in the generic job description on pages 1-3.

As part of our data journalism expansion in Birmingham we are recruiting a Software Engineer/Data Scientist.

Main Responsibilities

The purpose of this role is to be one of the data experts in a team of journalists working on data driven stories, largely using R and Python.

This is a role for a programmer, data scientist, or a mix of both, who loves the idea of working in a fast paced news environment.

The successful candidate will work alongside data journalists: finding, cleaning, scraping, analysing and preparing data for publication; building the technical skill of their data journalist colleagues and applying modern analysis techniques and sources to help the team find and tell news stories with data.

Are you the right candidate?

• Ability to extract, clean and transform data from a variety of sources including APIs, databases and unstructured sources
• Ability to visualise, analyse, model and interpret data
• Ability to deliver publication ready data, accurate figures and supporting information
• Good communication skills; particularly around explaining findings in and limitations of data
• Interest in news and current affairs

About the BBC

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 in the document attached below.

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.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here

Package Description

Band: C
Contract type: Fixed term contract (12 months)
Location: Birmingham

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. 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 competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

Job Application Requirements:

• CV
• Questionnaire with opportunity to detail your experience

Any offer of employment with the BBC will be conditional upon you having the right to work in the UK.