Data Scientist

Salary Circa £45,000 - £60,000

Location London (Hybrid)

Permanent

Full time / Part time

Closing Date: April 21st 2025

We currently have an opportunity for a Data Scientist to join our team. This role is open to flexible working, with 21 hours per week a minimum.

The ASA is the UK’s regulator of advertising across all media, including online. Our work includes taking proactive action against misleading, harmful, offensive or otherwise irresponsible ads and acting on complaints. Our Data Science team uses data and machine learning to proactively monitor online advertising and is responsible for our Active Ad Monitoring system, which captures and processes more than 3 million ads each month, allowing us to respond rapidly and effectively to important issues. We are seeking someone with prior professional experience working with complex datasets to join this team.

Reporting to the Head of Data Science, in this role you will work with the ads captured by the ASA’s Active Ad Monitoring system. You will work with images, videos and especially the text of ads from social media, search and web display. You will collaborate with experts across a range of advertising sectors to understand their needs. You will work primarily in Python to perform analysis to extract insight about prevalence of potential issues and help inform priorities. You will also train machine learning models and use LLM-based tools to filter large volumes of ads to find those that are relevant, or that break the rules. You will take end-to-end ownership of projects and will directly see how your work protects people in the UK from harmful and misleading content.

Current projects within the team focus on diverse topics such as ensuring influencer marketing on social media follows advertising rules; monitoring the green claims companies make to consumers; and making sure ads for weight loss medications are responsible. You will report directly to the Head of Data Science, working alongside other Data Scientists and Data Engineers. As part of a developing team, you will have the chance to help shape our approach and ultimately the way data-led insight and machine learning is used to regulate advertising.

Candidates must be able to work with data in Python, and have an understanding of statistical concepts and machine learning. You must be comfortable communicating complex ideas to non-technical people, and you must believe in our mission as a regulator. Candidates should either have prior data science experience, or have done similar work in another setting e.g. academic research in a data-intensive field or as an analyst working with Python. Please note we do not have a sponsorship licence and are unable to sponsor visas.

We think the ASA is a great place to work. We have a culture that’s open, friendly and collaborative, with a real focus on making the right decisions in the right way, and learning while we’re doing it. We’re always looking to improve diversity within our teams, and we’d love to hear from people from diverse backgrounds for this role. We encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in this field of work. We operate a hybrid working model and office attendance is required 40% of your contracted hours.

How to apply: If you’re interested in applying for this role, please review the job description below and complete the online questions telling us how you meet the requirements of the role and how you can contribute to our success.

Please note that we'll keep the ad open till we fill the post and will be reviewing applications as they come in.

Role: The Data Scientist will deliver analysis and machine learning projects that address real-world challenges faced by the ASA in the regulation of online advertising.

Responsibilities

With support from the Head of Data Science and time to learn new skills where needed the Data Scientist will:

Take end-to-end ownership of data science projects
Communicate with stakeholders to understand the challenges they face daily when regulating advertising, translating these into technical solutions
Work with a range of unstructured data such as text, images and videos from a variety of sources
Apply statistical and machine learning techniques to these datasets including LLM-based tools
Deliver insights that inform the focus and approach taken when teams deliver regulation in specific areas
Deploy models into production to support ongoing monitoring of compliance and proactive identification of potentially problematic content

We are looking for candidates who have:

Prior relevant experience – Experience working with complex datasets either as a Data Scientist, or another relevant role e.g. in academic research or an analyst role.
Programming Skills – Experience writing code to manipulate data and apply statistical or machine learning techniques in Python
Statistics/Machine Learning – Experience applying at least a couple of statistical and/or machine learning techniques and an understanding of how those techniques work behind the scenes
Communication – The ability to communicate technical solutions to non-technical stakeholders, explaining the value of your work

The ideal candidate also has the following personal attributes:

Interest in our mission - A desire to make a positive contribution to the regulation of advertising in the UK
Creative problem solver - Able to think about a complex problem from multiple perspectives, identifying potential solutions
Takes ownership - Willing to take responsibility for delivering a project end-to-end
Critical thinking - Able to reflect on their work, spotting mistakes and weaknesses and correcting them where practical
Team worker - Wants to collaborate with a team of individuals with mixed expertise and backgrounds, making a positive contribution to team culture

Please note we do not have a sponsorship licence and are unable to sponsor visas.

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