Principal/Lead Data Scientist

Principal Data Scientist

Job Reference: 41354

Band: D

Salary: £73,000 - £83,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: 13 months FTC / Attachment

Location: Salford, Glasgow, Newcastle, London. 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.

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 Principal Data Scientist to help us in this next stage of our journey.

As a Principal Data Scientist, you’ll play a key role in shaping the technical direction of recommender systems used by millions of people each day. You’ll be a hands on contributor – prototyping, experimenting, and guiding the technical approach 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.

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• Use your technical skills to deliver value to BBC audiences, blending a breadth and depth of data science expertise.
  
• Have impact within your immediate team and beyond, across the wider BBC, instrumental in developing scalable ML products.
  
• Work effectively within a cross‑functional environment, collaborating to overcome the real‑world challenges of deploying and maintaining ML in production.
  
• Apply your knowledge of machine learning algorithms to solve complex user and business problems in a robust and scalable way.
  
• Join the wider BBC Data Science community, with internal and external opportunities to get involved, share your knowledge, and mentor colleagues.
  

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• 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 recommender systems.
  
• Strong coding skills in Python.
  
• Ability to clearly communicate to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
  
• Ability to work effectively in a cross‑functional team.
  

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• 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.
  

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

You've found above some of the skills and experience we expect from a Principal Data Scientist. Please do not think you have to tick all boxes: you will be working in a supportive and collaborative team, where we aim to put everyone in the condition to contribute at their best and feel that their work is useful and valued. Besides, you will find great development and learning opportunities to support your professional growth.

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.

There Is a 2‑stage Process

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• Hiring manager introductory call covering role background and candidate motivations for applying (external applicants only).
  
• 1.5 hour panel interview including a technical presentation from the candidate and role relevant competency‑based questions.
  

Freelancers are eligible to apply for an internal role if they are on a Worker Contract (more info here) and they have worked continuously for 6 months. If they have worked for less than 6 months continuously or have a break of 3 weeks or more between engagements, they must seek Divisional HR approval to apply for an internal role prior to submitting an application.