Principal Data Scientist
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 16, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 16, 2026.
JOB DETAILS
JOB BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent
LOCATION: London TVC - 2 days a week in office
DEPARTMENT: Data Insights
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £78,000 - £84,000 on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. Plus London Weighting Allowance of £5,441.The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
We're happy to discuss flexible working. If you'd like to, please indicate your preference in the application - though there's no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.
WE ARE BBC STUDIOS
A globally renowned media company borne of the BBC. We make and distribute the world’s most sought-after TV, audio and digital content.
Our ambition is to be the home of the most powerful, entertaining, and inspiring stories for people all around the world.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
The way BBC Studios operates has changed significantly over the last 5 years. It has moved into new areas of business and alongside that has developed the data capabilities required to support a modern organisation. We have built a successful data science team and are looking for a principal data scientist to join us, working across the different BBC Studios’ lines of business.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM
We have built a successful data science team and are looking for a Principal Data Scientist. You will be working across all of BBC Studios’ lines of business to understand where data science can make a difference. As data remains a developing capability within BBC Studios, this role will be central to driving data education and supporting the organisation’s cultural evolution. This role will play a critical role in the education and culture change we are bringing to the business and act as a champion for the Data Science team, promoting its work and building understanding of the value data driven insights can bring to BBC Studio.
YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:
- Lead data science projects across our different lines of business. For commercial News, it might be automated decision-making to chose between subscription prompts and adverts, or for TV commissioning it could be developing synthetic audiences as an alternative to traditional surveys.
- Drive Studios’ capabilities to power data driven decision making, including automated tagging and other metadata focussed solutions to enhace discoverability and recommendations.
- Provide technical leadership in defining problem statements, and selecting the most appropriate algorithmic approaches and data sources.
- Own the end-to-end delivery of data science projects, from ideation and proof of concept through to production.
- Collaborate closely with stakeholders across the business, clearly communicating insights, impact, and recommendations.
- Keep up to date with latest development in generative AI and apply where appropriate.
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:
- Strong experience in a data science or closely related role.
- A degree in mathematics, statistics, computer science or related field.
- A background working in media, customer research or related area.
- A hands-on approach to problem solving, from understanding the impact down to mathematical details.
- Excellent programming skills with Python.
- Good working knowledge of SQL and experience querying large datasets.
- Experience building machine learning models and deploying them into production.
- Experience shaping projects and translating vague business problems into practical solutions.
- Experience interacting with senior stakeholders and leading technical workstreams.
If you can bring some of these skills and experience, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply
NEXT STEPS
We appreciate your interest in this position and understand how important this opportunity is to you. Due to the high volume of interest we may need to close the application period earlier than anticipated. This step is necessary to ensure we can provide a high level of attention and service to all applicants. Thank you for your understanding.