Data & Intelligence Director (Online Safety)

Job Description:

Please note that this role will close at 00:01 on Friday 17 October, and therefore we advise getting your application in by no later than midnight on Thursday 16 October.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV along with a covering letter outlining how you meet the skills and experience required for the role. Please put your covering letter and CV into one document.

About Ofcom

As the UK’s communications regulator, we’re delivering vital work that helps keep the UK connected and shapes the future of how we’ll stay connected with each other.

Our work covers everything from phones and broadband, through to TV, radio, the postal service, and wireless devices. We’ve also taken on the challenge of making the online world a safer place. And we need people of all backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences to help us achieve our goal of making communications work for everyone.

About the team you’ll be part of

The Online Safety Group’s purpose is to ensure UK citizens have a safer life online, using the duties set out in the Online Safety Act 2023. The Group leads engagement with a broad range of technology companies, including some of the biggest in the world, and works with functional teams across Ofcom to ensure the aims of the regime are met. This role will set up a new team, to lead the Group’s work on data and intelligence to support the effective functioning and evaluation of the Online Safety regime.

The purpose and scope of the role

At Ofcom, we’re committed to making the UK a safer place to be online. The Online Safety Programme aims to promote better risk management and governance, protect children, reduce illegal and harmful content online, embed safety by design in tech firms, and drive platform transparency and accountability. It is high profile work, driving real change to people’s experience online, and subject to extensive public scrutiny.

The Programme harnesses insights from a rich and diverse ecosystem of data—ranging from publicly available sources and regulated services, to data and insight from partners across government and industry, as well as commissioned research and longitudinal studies.

While this programme already draws on a wide array of intelligence, we’re now looking for a visionary leader to bring it all together. As Director of Data & Intelligence, you’ll create and lead a new function that acts as the central hub for data strategy and insight across the Online Safety Group. You’ll be the single point of accountability for coordinating Ofcom’s online safety research programme, ensuring we extract maximum value from the information we hold.

This is a pivotal role that will shape how data drives decision-making—strategic and tactical—across the programme. You’ll empower teams with the intelligence they need to anticipate risks, respond to emerging harms, and assess our impact on online safety in the UK.

To make life safer online in the UK, the Online Safety Programme draws insights from data from a broad range of sources, including: publicly available data, information shared by third party partners inside and outside government, information provided by regulated services, panel and tracker data, and research studies commissioned by Ofcom or by third parties. While the programme already encompasses a wide range of data and intelligence activity, this role will bring this together to provide a single point of ownership within the Online Safety Group and coordination across Ofcom’s online safety research programme. This enable us to leverage this information even more effectively to support strategic and tactical decision-making across the programme. The Data and Intelligence Director will establish and lead a new function to enable the OS programme to use data and intelligence as effectively as possible to deliver its strategic priorities. 

Your Key Responsibilities

The Director will lead several key areas of the Online Safety programme: 

• Strategy. Develop a data and intelligence strategy and delivery plan that places high quality intelligence and advanced data analysis at the heart of the Programme.
• Requirements. Gather, refine and prioritise requirements for data and analysis across the Programme, and identify how best to meet those requirements from the range of data sources and techniques available across Ofcom.
• Data architecture. Champion the architecture and infrastructure requirements that will enable the Programme to make the most of its data. Support the effective delivery of those requirements by collaborating with the corporate data and ICT teams responsible for the organisation-wide approach to data.
• Impact. Ensure information, intelligence, evaluation and data outputs drive decision making, including by designing and commissioning a suite of strategic intelligence outputs and implementing and driving processes to ensure these are used effectively by policy and compliance teams.
• Commissioning and planning. Lead and coordinate the commissioning of data and intelligence outputs to meet Programme needs. Maintain the pipeline of data products, analysis and infrastructure projects. Work closely with the Research & Intelligence and Economics & Analytics Groups that are critical delivery partners, including determining the extent of in-group analytics capability required to work with those teams. Coordinate and quality-assure requests for data sent to regulated services
• Evaluation. Coordinate and commission work to evaluate the impact of the Programme, determining how far it has made life safer online for UK users. Ensure the insights we receive from risk assessments and other information received from services are used in the most effective way to inform our activities.
• Change. Lead the Online Safety Group’s input into Ofcom’s major Digital, Data and AI projects overseen by the Transformation Director. 
• Partnerships. Establish and maintain good working relationships with relevant strategic partners (such as other regulators, law enforcement and civil society partners) in relation to data and intelligence gathering supporting delivery of our strategic priorities.

The Director will establish a new team,  including relevant existing teams within the Online Safety Group, and coordinate with delivery partners across Ofcom to fulfil these responsibilities.. They will take over leadership of the OS Data and Intelligence Programme and OS Product work programme. They will have the opportunity to shape the exact team structure and numbers.

The role is being advertised as an initial 18-month Fixed Term Appointment, subject to review following the set-up phase of the OS Data and Intelligence team and the Ofcom-wide Transformation programme.

The skills, knowledge and experience you’ll need for success

Knowledge and experience

• Excellent relationship-building and influencing skills, with proven ability to collaborate across a range of technical and non-technical teams to produce results (essential)
• Strong track record of leading work to derive valuable and actionable intelligence from a wide variety of data sources (essential)
• Proven ability to evaluate evidence quality and understand methodological robustness of data collection and analysis’ (essential)
• Experience of leading significant strategic change programmes in a complex organisation (essential), particularly digital transformation (desirable)
• Strong track record of people leadership and a personal commitment to diversity and inclusion (essential)
• Strong technical understanding of data governance, data architecture and management, and data analytics (desirable)
• Knowledge of online safety policy or trust and safety practice (desirable)
• Commercial acumen, especially in the technology sector, and understanding of how things work in the businesses we regulate (desirable)

Behavioural attributes

• Building Solutions: Identify and solve complex issues, using evidence-based methods to gather insights and develop well-founded solutions.
• Harmonising Work: Build trusted relationships in order to work effectively with internal and external partners, creating a ‘one team’ culture and sharing information and resources and working across teams to deliver desired outcomes.
• Articulating Ideas: Express your ideas, thoughts, and information in a clear and concise manner, ensuring messages are understood by everyone.
• Scanning Horizons: Grasp the bigger picture, foresee upcoming trends and challenges, and ensure actions and decisions are in sync with long-term objectives.
• Embracing Change: Lead confidently in uncertain situations by staying flexible, adapting to change, guiding others through transitions, responding quickly to challenges, and helping people build the skills and confidence to adjust effectively.

Inclusivity Statement

Ofcom has a clear mission: to make communications work for everyone.  To be able to deliver on this, we want our organisation to reflect the diversity of background, experience, upbringing and thought that exists across the UK.  We aim to recruit from the widest pool of candidates possible – no matter your social background, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or disability. We also warmly welcome applicants who are returning to the workforce after a break – for whatever reason. If you have taken time away and are ready to rejoin, we look forward to reviewing your application.

Where positions are listed as full-time, we remain open to reduced hours, part-time arrangements, job shares, and other flexible working options. From day one, we champion flexible work arrangements to accommodate individual needs. You can read more about our Rewards, Benefits and Well-being on our careers page.

Our recruitment processes prioritise accessibility and inclusivity. If you need adjustments, information in an alternative format, or prefer to apply in a different way, please contact us at resourcing@ofcom.org.uk or call 0330 912 1378.

As a Disability Confident Leader, we offer interviews to disabled applicants who meet essential criteria for advertised roles. Learn more about this scheme here.  https://careers.ofcom.org.uk/careers/how-we-hire/