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Junior Analyst / Senior Research Assistant, Data and Statistics

The Bank of England is the UK's central bank. Our mission is to deliver monetary and financial stability for the British people.

The Bank of England is a diverse organisation. Each of its 4,000 plus people are committed to public service and dedicated to promoting the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability.

Data and Statistics Division (DSD), part of the Data and Analytics Transformation Directorate (DAT), is the Bank’s centre of expertise for compilation, dissemination and publication of regulatory and statistical data, promoting innovation and quality to support analysis, policy and decision making by the Bank’s Committees, UK government departments and international organisations.

Data is collected from banks and buildings societies, credit unions, insurance companies and regulated mortgage lenders and administrators. This takes place via 35 statistical collections and over 200 regulatory collections.

We cleanse a sizeable proportion of these datasets and publish a large number of Statistical data via our interactive database. We support MPC, FPC and PRA Board and our data are used in the Inflation Report, Financial Stability Report, Credit Conditions Review, Stress Test Results, FPC Core Indicators and Quarterly Bulletin.

Department Overview

The Money & Credit Group (MCG) within DSD focuses on the compilation and communication of key features of real economy lending and deposit data that the Bank publishes, and quality assurance and management of these data.

Job description

We are recruiting for a Junior Analyst/Senior Research Assistant to work on producing the Bank’s interest rate statistics in the Household and Rates team. The job holder will combine skills in analytical tools, such as R, with a curiosity about money and credit data. The job offers the opportunity of developing both analytical and technical skills, and has the flexibility to be moulded towards the job holder’s current skills.

The job holder would spend approximately half their time producing and explaining the monthly statistics on money and credit. They would use the knowledge gained from this, and their technical (e.g. R) skills, to improve the efficiency of data processes across MCG’s varied data sets, and DSD more widely. This work is varied, and could include developing processes for handling loan-level data, visualising data in Tableau dashboards, or working on DSD wide projects to use R to design and implement more automated processes for quality assuring and aggregating data.

The specific responsibilities undertaken by the job holder will depend on their skills. The role will involve being part of the monthly data round, helping compile and explain movements in money, credit and interest rates data. This part of the role will take around half the month. As part of this the job holder will:

• Conduct due diligence on banks’ returns to understand unusually large movements or spurious stability in the data;
• Collect market intelligence from individual banks as part of the due diligence process, identifying common themes and stories that emerge;
• Have the opportunity to present the latest developments in the data to other areas of the Bank, for example via presenting at the “Latest Trends in DSD Data” meeting, and writing key data indicator briefings.
• Explain technicalities and movements in the data in response to queries from internal and external users.
• Depending on the skills and development wishes of the applicant, the job holder will also have the opportunity to be involved in some of the following:
  • Maintenance and development of Tableau Dashboards to allow a ‘self-service’ culture for data.
  • Maintaining and developing scripts (R and Python) for acquiring data.
  • Crafting and implementing process in R for cleaning data.
  • Use R to design and implement more automated processes for checking and aggregating data, including building on Machine Learning techniques developed in DSD.
  • Be involved with DSD wide projects, including to use technology to design the future of plausibility checking data, or build a tool that allows effective sharing of information about data returns across teams in DSD.

The job holder will also be encouraged to actively challenge the way we work, and suggest ways in which we can use technology to work more optimally and inclusively as a team.

Role Requirements
Minimum (Essential) Criteria

• Strong technology skills, including the desire to develop these skills further. A good understanding of tools such as R, Tableau or Python would be helpful, but a desire to learn R would be vital;
• A keen interest in understanding banks’ interactions with UK households and businesses, and how developments relate to policy issues of our users;
• Strong numeracy skills;
• Strong interpersonal skills to be able to work across a large team;
• Be well organised, and able to make progress on projects whilst dealing with the commitments of a monthly round; and
• Ability to work autonomously.

Our Approach to Inclusion

The Bank values diversity, equity and inclusion. We play a key role in maintaining monetary and financial stability, and to do that effectively, we believe we need a workforce that reflects the society we serve.

At the Bank of England we want all colleagues to feel valued and respected, so we're working hard to build an inclusive culture which supports people from all backgrounds and communities to be at their best at work. We celebrate all forms of diversity, including (but not limited to) age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status. We believe that it’s by drawing on different perspectives and experiences that we’ll continue to make the best decisions for the public.

We welcome applications from individuals who work flexibly, including job shares and part time working patterns. We've also partnered with external organisations to support us in making adjustments for candidates and employees in the recruitment process where they're needed.

For most roles where work can be carried out at home, we aim for colleagues to spend half of their time in the office, with a minimum of 40% per month. Subject to that minimum requirement, individuals and managers should work together to find what works best for them, their team and stakeholders.

Finally, we're proud to be a member of the Disability Confident scheme. You can find more information on what this means here. If you wish to apply under this scheme, you should check the box in the ‘Candidate Personal Information’ under the ‘Disability Confident Scheme’ section of the application.

Salary and Benefits Information

This specific role offers a base salary of circa £28,810 - £33,000 per annum (depending on skills and experience) on a full-time basis. We encourage flexible working, part time working. Part time salary and benefits will be on a pro-rated basis as appropriate.

In addition, we also offer a comprehensive benefits package as detailed below:

• A non-contributory, career average pension giving you a guaranteed retirement benefit of 1/95th of your annual salary for every year worked. There is the option to increase your pension (to 1/50th) or decrease (to 1/120th) in exchange for salary through our flexible benefits programme each year.
• A discretionary performance award based on a current award pool.
• A 7% benefits allowance with the option to take as salary or purchase a wide range of flexible benefits. (Note that from April 2023 and for the Benefits year 2023/24, this will increase to 8%)
• 26 days’ annual leave with option to buy up to 12 additional days through flexible benefits.
• Private medical insurance and income protection.

National Security Vetting Process

Employment in this role will be subject to the National Security Vetting clearance process (and typically can take between 6 to 12 weeks post offer) and the passing of additional Bank security checks in accordance with the Bank policy. Further information regarding the vetting and security clearance requirements for the role will be provided to the successful applicant, and information about how the Bank processes personal data for these purposes, is set out in the Bank’s Privacy Notice at Privacy and the Bank of England | Bank of England.

The Application Process

Important: Please ensure that you complete the ‘work history’ section and answer ALL the application questions fully. All candidate applications are anonymised to ensure that our hiring managers will not be able to see your personal information, including your CV, when reviewing your application details at the screening stage. It’s therefore really important that you fill out the work history and application form questions, as your answers will form a critical part of the initial selection process.

The closing date for applications is 12th July 2023.

The assessment process will comprise of two stages.