Assistant Editor, AI

BBC; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 54,000 - 68,000; Full time

Job description

Package Description

Job Reference: 23264

Band: E

Salary: £54,000 - £67,285 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Office Base is Cardiff. This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.

We're happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

Excellent career progression - the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.

Unrivalled training and development opportunities - our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.

Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care and gym. You can find out more about working at the BBC by selecting this link to our candidate pack.

If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process please contact the [e-mail]. For any general queries, please contact: [e-mail].

Job Introduction

The Assistant Editor (AI) plays a central role in delivering and coordinating AI-related workstreams across BBC News. The role leads a team in Cardiff and focuses on operational delivery, supporting editorial teams as they experiment with AI tools and ensuring projects run smoothly, effectively, and in alignment with the BBC's editorial values.

Main Responsibilities

We are looking for an experienced journalist and organiser to support the integration of generative AI and related technologies into the BBC News operation. This is a hands-on, delivery-focused role, helping to run pilots and coordinate AI projects across editorial teams. The Assistant Editor will work closely with editors, product managers, R+D colleagues, and other BBC teams to support day-to-day progress on AI experiments and trials.

They will also help identify operational barriers, track milestones, and ensure learnings from pilots are shared across the organisation. The Assistant Editor will play a vital role in ensuring the responsible implementation of AI and ensuring usage within BBC News remains editorially sound, practically useful, and audience focused.

The successful candidate will:

• Manage a team of journalists accelerating AI pilots and experiments within BBC News, ensuring their output meets editorial standards and is focused on delivery
• Support the delivery of AI-related pilots and workflows within editorial teams
• Track progress against timelines, priorities and key results, as agreed with the Senior News Editor (AI), ensuring effective planning and execution
• Work closely with editorial and product colleagues to help shape and iterate tools in real time - both in the newsroom and for audiences
• Be responsible for managing documentation and insights from pilots to inform next steps
• Lead meetings and workshops across departments to maintain alignment and momentum
• Flag risks and recommend practical adjustments to keep projects on track
• Be confident operating in a fast-moving environment and engaging with emerging technology
• Understand editorial workflows and be able to map new technology into existing processes - starting in concrete needs
• Demonstrate skills and curiosity in using generative AI tools to boost personal productivity

Scope

Conception, delivery and management of AI projects within BBC News. Day-to-day management of workflows and outputs for assigned projects. Maintains relationships with relevant internal stakeholders in editorial and cross-functional teams.

Strategic impact/Influence

May represent the team in relevant forums or deputise for senior colleagues on specific project updates.

Reporting structure

Reports to Senior News Editor (AI)

Are you the right candidate?

Essential:

• Strong editorial judgment, backed by at least five years in a fast-paced news environment
• Experience leading projects to drive digital transformation and workflow changes in a large news organization
• Creative ideas for leveraging AI to enhance quality journalism, improve user experiences, and grow audiences
• Ability to foster creativity and experimentation, shows openness to new ways of doing things.
• Demonstrates a commitment to improving diversity in the BBC and understands how individual differences can benefit the BBC.
• Able to prioritise and plan activities taking into account all the relevant issues and factors such as deadlines, staffing, budgets and resource requirements.
• Ability to communicate to differing audiences and across all forms of multimedia output.
• Maintains personal effectiveness in the face of pressure, setbacks or when dealing with demanding situations. Demonstrates an approach to work that is characterised by commitment, motivation and passion.
• Awareness of BBC News priorities and their implications for this work

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

We don't focus simply on what we do - we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you've read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC - whether that's to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.