Junior Machine Learning Engineer

About Ofcom

Ofcom is the regulator for the communications services that we use and rely on each day.  We make sure people get the best from their broadband, home phone and mobile services, as well as keeping an eye on TV and radio.

Our culture is clear - we live by our values: Empowerment; Excellence; Collaboration; Agility and Respect. These define how we work to deliver our purpose, now and in the future. The behaviours which support these values set the path for a fully inclusive and innovative culture at Ofcom.

We focus not only on what we do, but how we do it. We pride ourselves on being an organisation of people who genuinely care about helping others.

About the Team

This role sits within our data management office function. We support projects across technology, policy, research, operations, people, and ICT. We are part of the wider Corporate Group. Ofcom’s Corporate Group is playing a central role, transforming the way in which we use in-depth technical and analytical knowledge, and awareness of the broader tech sector, to drive our regulatory and policy work.

The group’s work spans critical sectors, from broadband and mobile networks to broadcast TV and radio services. And now we are responsible for regulating UK video sharing platforms leading the technical work as we gear up to regulate online safety and ensure people can live a safer life online. We’re also building a deeper understanding the role that cross-cutting technologies such as artificial intelligence and deep learning play across all our sectors.

Purpose of the Role

As a junior machine learning engineer the successful candidate will work within the Data Innovation Hub to help deliver a programme of work that will develop and share fundamental understanding of the algorithms that underpin online services to help meet Ofcom's Online Safety objectives.

The successful candidate will use their knowledge of Machine Learning and Deep Learning techniques to develop pilot projects in the areas of content moderation and/or recommender systems, including underlying work in Natural language understanding or video/image processing. This will contribute to work throughout the Online Safety programme including transparency reports and platform monitoring.

Key Responsibilities

• Working collaboratively with colleagues in the Data Innovation Hub, policy and operations teams to deliver innovative projects.
• Delivering pilot projects to explore ML and DL techniques in areas such as such NLU, image and video classification, recommender systems, and content moderation systems.
• Exploring the availability and capabilities of “off the shelf” models
• Investigating how models can be tailored to specific use cases, including using fine-tuning, active learning and other techniques.
• Using best coding practices to generate reproducible work in an agile way.
• Documenting research, including developing appropriate assessment techniques.
• Working with data engineers to source, access, manipulate and engineer data across a range of sources and data formats.
• Helping other teams understand the variety of machine learning and deep learning methods and how they can be effectively applied to solve problems.
• Ensuring compliance with our relevant data and information security principles
• Supporting colleagues in engagement with internal and external stakeholders on a range of deep learning and machine learning related topics.

• Ensuring compliance with our relevant data and information security principles

• Supporting colleagues in engagement with internal and external stakeholders on a range of deep learning and machine learning related topics.

Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Demonstratable practical experience developing ML and DL models, preferably in one or more of the following areas:
  • recommender systems
  • natural language understanding
  • image classification
  • video classification
  • multi-modal (speech, image, text) classification
  • content moderation systems
• Demonstratable practical experience programming using Python, Scikit learn, Tensorflow or Pytorch
• Applying scientific methods through experimental design, exploratory data analysis and hypothesis testing to reach robust conclusions, including reviewing the work of others.
• Strong interpersonal skills and evidence of ability to interact effectively with a range of stakeholders to communicate technical concepts and analytical results.
• Working as part of a team and independently, demonstrating flexibility and adaptability, and supporting a culture of collaboration and trust.

Qualifications

BSc or preferably MSc in Elec Eng, Comp Sci, Maths etc + 2 years relevant experience, or relevant PhD and no further experience

Ofcom is a forward-thinking, inclusive employer and recognises the value of diversity to truly “make communications work for everyone”. Here at Ofcom, our vision is to ensure people are part of an environment when they can truly strive and be themselves, therefore we aim to recruit from the widest pool of candidates possible – irrespective of social background, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or disability. We are an organisation that strives to be truly representative of the whole of the UK and our aim is to be an employer of choice for everyone.

We champion flexible working and so wherever possible we support flexible working patterns including job shares.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to interview disabled applicants who meets the minimum selection criteria of the role as outlined in the job specification, if applicants would like to be considered under this scheme. We pride ourselves on ensuring all candidates are treated fairly throughout the application and selection process including making our process as accessible as possible. You can find more information on the scheme here. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/jobs/disability-confident-scheme

Should you require any adjustments to be made, please do contact us directly at resourcing@ofcom.org.uk or call 0330 912 1378

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