Market Intelligence Analyst

Ofcom’s mission is to make communications work for everyone. We regulate broadband and mobile services, postal services, TV and radio, and the airwaves over which wireless devices operate. Under the 2023 Online Safety Act we took on duties as the UK’s online safety regulator.

The Research and Intelligence (R&I) team is responsible for providing a deep understanding of market developments and the outcomes for consumers and citizens in the markets we regulate. We collect the evidence base that underpins Ofcom's decisions and informs Ofcom’s policy work. The team includes market researchers, industry analysts and data specialists. R&I has been growing as we build the evidence base for the upcoming Online Safety regime, and we are investing in variety of data sources and combining methodological approaches to build an effective picture of online harms and online safety.

Our culture is clear - we live by Ofcom’s 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 and in the R&I team.

Purpose of the Role

We are seeking a market intelligence analyst with a good understanding of how to measure and understand large and complex industries. The successful candidate will need excellent data analysis skills, strong communication skills and a good understanding of the online industry.

The work will involve the collection and analysis of data from a range of sources – from online services themselves as well as from third party datasets - to enhance our understanding of risks and safety practices across platforms. The role’s focus is on using large datasets to generate up-to-date insights about key online sectors, including social media, search engines, gaming, adult sites and more.

Key activities will include identifying relevant datasets to inform our knowledge of the online services sector, updating those datasets when needed, designing indicators of risk based on our data, and generating insights to share with policy colleagues on both a regular and ad hoc basis. The post holder will become a data manager for key datasets and will field relevant requests or queries from Ofcom teams.

The role will involve engagement with partners and stakeholders across the online services industry, third-party data providers and experts. The postholder will also work very closely with Ofcom teams working on online safety including policy colleagues, lawyers, technologists and economists.

The job is full-time and based at either Ofcom’s Manchester, London or Edinburgh office (the successful applicant’s choice). We recognise that not everyone has the same needs and we strive to offer flexible working arrangements to help manage work and personal commitments. We have family-friendly policies that actively seek to support our colleagues and enable our teams to work in the most effective way.

As the online safety regime is focused on assessing services’ systems and processes, rather than adjudicating on individual pieces of content, we do not anticipate that colleagues working in this role will be routinely exposed to harmful or distressing online content. At the same time, due to the nature of the harms covered by the online safety regime, some exposure to distressing content or themes may be unavoidable from time to time. We will offer support to colleagues to manage any such exposure, but candidates should be aware of this aspect of the role.

Required skills, knowledge, and experience

• Skills and experience in analysing large datasets.
• Experience of, or willingness to learn, data analytical and visualisation tools (such as SPSS, Python, R, Power BI, Azure Databricks).
• Excellent knowledge of the online platform sector.
• Good attention to detail and commitment to ensure work is accurate.
• Strong time management and organisational skills to manage and prioritise a range of work, projects, and ad hoc requests.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for data analysis and strategic thinking.
• The ability to work well in fluid and rapidly evolving work environments.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex results and technical issues clearly and concisely in writing and orally to different audiences/stakeholders.
• Strong skills in Microsoft Excel and proficiency in PowerPoint to manage data sets, analyse results and present data.
• Good knowledge of the Online Safety Act.

Desirable skills and experience

• Experience in stakeholder management, with demonstrable ability to build and maintain working relationships with a broad range of people, including colleagues across disciplines, industry stakeholders and external experts.
• Prior use of information management tools such as Salesforce.
• Specialist knowledge of a particular type of online service, possibly to include Search services, video-sharing services, gaming services, social media services, adult services or messaging services.
• Experience of using APIs or web scraping to create or query online datasets.
• Knowledge of graph/network analysis for online datasets.
• Experience using online audience measurement datasets such as Ipsos iris, Comscore and/or Similarweb