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Trying to find useful things to do with emerging technologies in open education

Recently (And Not So Recently) Advertised Data Jobs…

I’m doing a couple of talks to undergrad and postgrad students next work – on data journalism at the University of Lincoln, and on open data at the University of Southampton – so I thought I’d do a quick round up of recently advertised data related jobs that I could reuse for an employability slide…

So, here are some of the things I’ve noticed recently:

  • The Technology Strategy board, funders of many a data related activity (including the data vouchers for SMEs) are advertising for a Lead Technologist – Data Economy (£45,000 to £55,000):

    The UK is increasingly reliant on its service economy, and on the ability to manage its physical economy effectively, and it exports these capabilities around the world. Both aspects of this are heavily dependent on the availability of appropriate information at the right place and time, which in turn depends on our ability to access and manipulate diverse sources of data within a commercial environment.

    The internet and mobile communications and the ready availability of computing power can allow the creation of a new, data-rich economy, but there are technical, human and business challenges still to be overcome. With its rich data resources, inventive capacity and supportive policy landscape, the UK is well placed to be the centre of this innovation.

    Working within the Digital team, to develop and implement strategies for TSB’s interventions in and around the relevant sectors.

    This role requires the knowledge and expertise to develop priorities for how the UK should address this opportunity, as well as the interpersonal skills to introduce the relevant communities of practice to appropriate technological solutions. It also requires a knowledge of how innovation works within businesses in this space, to allow the design and targeting of TSB’s activities to effectively facilitate change.

    Accessible tools include, but are not restricted to, networking and community building, grant-funding of projects at a wide range of scales, directing support services to businesses, work through centres such as the Open Data Institute and Connected Digital Economy Catapult, targeted procurement through projects such as LinkedGov, and inputs to policy. The role requires drawing upon this toolkit to design a coordinated programme of interventions that has impact in its own right and which also coordinates with other activities across TSB and the wider innovation landscape.

  • Via the ECJ, a relayed message from the NICAR-L mailing list about a couple of jobs going with The Times and Sunday Times:

    A couple of jobs that might be of interest to NICAR members here at the
    Times of London…

    The first is an investigative data journalist role, joining the new data journalism unit which will work across both The Times and The Sunday Times.

    The other is a editorial developer role: this will sit within the News Development Team and will focus on anything from working out how we tell stories in richer more immersive ways, to creating new ways of presenting Times and Sunday Times journalism to new audiences.

    Please get in touch if you are interested!

    Lucia
    Head of news development, The Times and Sunday Times
    @lucia_adams

Not a job ad as such, but an interesting recent innovation from the BirminghamMail:

We’ve launched a new initiative looking at the numbers behind our city and the stories in it.
‘Behind The Numbers’ is all about the explosion in ‘data’: information about our hospitals and schools, crime and the way it is policed, business and sport, arts and culture.
We’d like you to tell us what data you’d like us to publish and dig into. Email suggestions to ben.hurst@trinitymirror.com. Follow @bhamdatablog on Twitter for updates or to share ideas.

This was also new to me: FT Data, a stats/datablog from the FT? FullFact is another recent addition to my feed list, with a couple of interesting stories each day and plenty of process questions and methodological tricks that can be, erm, appropriated ;-) Via @JackieCarter, the Social Statistics blog looked interesting, but the partial RSS feed is a real turn off for me so I’ll probably drop it from my reader pretty quickly unless it turns up some *really* interesting posts.

Here are some examples of previously advertised jobs…

  • A job that was being advertised at the end of last year (now closed) by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) (current vacancies) was for the impressive sounding Head of Rich Content Development:

    The postholder is responsible for inspiring and leading development of innovative rich content outputs for the ONS website and other channels, which anticipate and meet user needs and expectations, including those of the Citizen User. The role holder has an important part to play in helping ONS to realise its vision “for official statistics to achieve greater impact on key decisions affecting the UK and to encourage broader use across the country”.

    Key Responsibilities:

    1. Inspires, builds, leads and develops a multi-disciplinary team of designers, developers, data analysts and communications experts to produce innovative new outputs for the ONS website and other channels.
    2. Keeps abreast of emerging trends and identifies new opportunities for the use of rich web content with ONS outputs.
    3. Identifies new opportunities, proposes new directions and developments and gains buy in and commitment to these from Senior Executives and colleagues in other ONS business areas.
    4. Works closely with business areas to identify, assess and commission new rich-content projects.
    5. Provides, vision, guidance and editorial approval for new projects based on a continual understanding of user needs and expectations.
    6. Develops and manages an ongoing portfolio of innovative content, maximising impact and value for money.
    7. Builds effective partnerships with media to increase outreach and engagement with ONS content.
    8. Establishes best practice in creation of rich content for the web and other channels, and works to improve practice and capability throughout ONS.

  • From December 2010, a short term contract at the BBC for a data journalist:

    The team is looking for a creative, tech-savvy data journalist (computer-assisted reporter) to join its website specials team to work with our online journalists, graphic designer and development teams.

    Role Purpose and Aims

    You will be required to humanize statistics; to make sense of potentially complicated data and present it in a user friendly format.

    You will be asked to focus on a range of data-rich subjects relating to long-term projects or high impact daily new stories, in line with Global News editorial priorities. These could include the following: reports on development, global poverty, Afghanistan casualties, internet connectivity around the world, or global recession figures.

    Key Knowledge and Experience

    You will be a self-starter, brimming with story ideas who is comfortable with statistics and has the expertise to delve beneath the headline figures and explain the fuller picture.
    You will have significant journalistic experience gained ideally from working in an international news environment.
    The successful candidate should have experience (or at least awareness) of visualising data and visualisation tools.
    You should be excited about developing the way that data is interpreted and presented on the web, from heavy number crunching, to dynamic mapping and interactive graphics. You must have demonstrated knowledge of statistics, statistical analysis, with a good understanding of the range and breadth of data sources in the UK and internationally, broad experience with data sources, data mining and have good visual and statistical skills.
    You must have a Computer-assisted reporting background or similar, including a good knowledge of the relevant software (including Excel and mapping software).
    Experience of producing and developing data driven web content a senior level within time and budget constraints.

    Central to the role is an ability to analyse complicated information and present it to our readers in a way that is visually engaging and easy to understand, using a range of web-based technologies, for which you should have familiarity with database interfaces and web presentation layers, as well as database concepting, content entry and management.
    You will be expected to have your own original ideas on how to best apply data driven journalism, either to complement stories when appropriate or to identify potential original stories while interpreting data, researching and investigating them, crunching the data yourself and working with designers and developers on creating content that will engage our audience, and provide them with useful, personalised information.

    FWIW, it’s probably worth remembering that the use of data is not necessarily a new thing.. for example, this post – The myth of the missing Data Scientist – does a good job debunking some of the myths around “data science”.

Written by Tony Hirst

February 1, 2013 at 1:02 pm

Posted in Jobs

Tagged with ,

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