Media AI Technologist - 12 Month FTC

Sky; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous pension package

Private healthcare

Discounted mobile and broadband

Exclusive Sky VIP rewards

Job summary

A major media company in the UK seeks an Innovation Technologist for its Content Technology & Innovation division. The role focuses on translating ideas into testable prototypes and continuously improving media workflows through innovative AI techniques. Candidates should have a Master's degree and strong experience in media intelligence and video understanding. The position offers flexible working with three office days each week at the Osterley location, alongside exciting perks including a generous pension and private healthcare.

Qualifications

• Experience with video and audio interpretation systems.
• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop controls.
• Strong grasp of GenAI stacks and cloud architectures.

Responsibilities

• Partner with teams to translate ideas into testable problem statements.
• Build and iterate prototypes using AI video understanding techniques.
• Drive continuous improvement and error analysis.

Skills

Media intelligence

Video understanding

Full-stack development

Agile methodologies

Technical storytelling

Education

Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Overview

Sky’s Content Technology & Innovation (CT&I) division is re-imagining how great ideas become real value delivered—especially in the day-to-day reality of media operations. To shorten the distance from concept to “something on-screen,” we’re creating an Innovation Technologist role focused on Media Intelligence (video understanding) and Media agent build: rapidly proving how AI can understand, enrich, and automate media workflows, then continuously improving those capabilities in production-like contexts.

What You’ll Do

• Idea to PoC Translation (Media Ops-first)
  • Partner with Content Innovation leads, Media Operations, Editorial/Creative, and Product/Engineering stakeholders to capture “napkin ideas” and distil them into testable problem statements grounded in real workflows.
  • Translate high-level goals into user journeys, user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable PoC success metrics (accuracy, latency, cost, operator time saved, exception rate, confidence/coverage).
  • Define the data and evaluation plan for video understanding use-cases (ground truth, sampling strategy, edge cases, failure taxonomy).
• Rapid Demo & PoC Delivery (Video Understanding + Agents)
  • Design lightweight scopes centred on the single most persuasive demo that proves or disproves the riskiest assumptions.
  • Build and iterate PoCs in 2–6 week cycles using AI video understanding techniques (multimodal models, speech-to-text, scene/shot detection, OCR, entity/event extraction, semantic search, summarisation, policy/brand checks).
  • Develop agentic workflows that can plan, call tools, and execute multi-step media tasks (e.g., “ingest → analyse → enrich metadata → flag risks → route exceptions → generate operator pack”).
  • Assemble “thin-slice” experiences that integrate into how Media Ops actually works (queues, triage dashboards, operator review loops, audit trails).
  • Own end-to-end delivery: hands-on coding, stitching together cloud services and off-the-shelf components.
• Continuous Improvement in Media Ops (From demo to durable capability)
  • Instrument PoCs with meaningful telemetry and feedback loops (precision/recall, human override rate, time-to-resolution, drift monitoring).
  • Drive a continuous improvement cycle: error analysis, prompt/model/tool refinement, evaluation set expansion, and operational playbooks.
  • Design for operational realities: robustness, explainability, safety guardrails, cost controls, and graceful degradation when confidence is low.
• Technical Validation & Storytelling
  • Analyse results and present evidence-based outcomes to stakeholders—what worked, what didn’t, why, and what’s next.
  • Craft demo narratives that resonate with business leadership and creatives alike; ensure “something is always on screen” during read-outs (live demo, side-by-side comparisons, operator workflow walkthroughs).

What You’ll Bring

• Media intelligence / video understanding foundation: Experience building systems that interpret video and audio (ASR, OCR, vision-language models, content classification, event/entity extraction, semantic retrieval) and translating model outputs into usable operational signals.
• Agent build understanding: Familiarity with agent patterns (tool use, planning, orchestration, memory/state, evaluation), and designing human-in-the-loop controls for reliability in operational workflows.
• Technical depth: Master’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; strong grasp of GenAI stacks and cloud architectures (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Full-stack bias for action: Comfortable moving from API design to UI prototypes to pipelines/DevOps to get a working demo in front of stakeholders quickly.
• Lean & Agile delivery: Proven use of design thinking, story mapping, Kanban/Scrum in ambiguous environments; ability to cut scope while increasing learning speed.

The Rewards

• There’s a reason people can’t stop talking about Sky. Our rewards include:
• Sky Q, for the TV you love all in one place
• A generous pension package
• Private healthcare
• Discounted mobile and broadband
• Access a wide range of exclusive Sky VIP rewards and experiences

How You’ll Work

At Sky, we want to be a community that thrives by being together. Flexible working remains a key part of that. We want our people to have the best of both worlds – time working at home, as well as time in the office.

The hybrid working expectations for this role are 3 days in the office per week. Osterley office.

Your office base

Osterley

Our Osterley Campus is a 10-minute walk from Syon Lane train station. Or you can hop on one of our free shuttle buses that run to and from Osterley, Gunnersbury, Ealing Broadway and South Ealing tube stations. There’s also plenty of bike shelters and showers.

On campus, you’ll find 13 subsidised restaurants, cafes, and a Waitrose. You can keep in shape at our subsidised gym, catch the latest shows and movies at our cinema, get your car washed and even get pampered at our beauty salon.

Inclusion

We’re an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We’re a Disability Confident Accredited Employer, and welcome and encourage applications from all candidates. We’ll look to ensure a fair and consistent experience for all and will make reasonable adjustments to support you where appropriate. Please flag any adjustments you need to your recruiter as early as you can.

Why wait?

Apply now to build an amazing career and be part of a brilliant team. We can’t wait to hear from you.

To find out more about working with us, search on social media. A job you love to talk about.

Just so you know: if your application is successful, we’ll ask you to complete a criminal record check. And depending on the role you have applied for and the nature of any convictions you may have, we might have to withdraw the offer.