Job Description
Summary
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office pursues our national interests and projects the UK’s role in the world.
We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK’s security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners.
Job description
The OSU strives to improve how the FCDO and our partners make use of open source data and analysis to help understand the world we operate in, enhance policy making, respond to international events, and evidence our impact.
This is a new role created in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine within the FCDOs’ expanding Open Source Unit (OSU) with a specific emphasis on enhancing the FCDO’s understanding of disinformation. The successful applicant will play a leadership role, managing and overseeing a small team.
We form a core part of the UK’s capability to detect, understand, analyse and counter the threat of disinformation. We are adapting rapidly to reflect the situation with regards to Ukraine. The team’s ability to analyse large amounts of foreign language open source data plays a key role in supporting a range of policy decisions.
Responsibilities
The successful candidate will:
- Contribute to, and help shape, team and wider FCDO understanding of disinformation tactics, technology and trends. This will include vulnerability and resilience factors with a particular focus on the war in Ukraine across traditional and social media.
- Develop the team’s capability (both tools and abilities) to identify, monitor and evaluate related disinformation and misinformation campaigns and support bigger picture policy requirements and react to technological changes.
- Line manage expert analysts to produce high quality analytical output on country-specific issues and disinformation issues related to Ukraine for FCDO senior colleagues, external stakeholders and international partners.
- Help drive the quality of the team’s analytical output by ensuring high standards, promoting training opportunities and contributing to developing the team’s methodological approach.
- Contribute as a senior member of OSU to the wider running of the Unit and support the Unit’s welfare.
- Build strong networks with a particular focus on disinformation to support understanding, share OSU analysis and demonstrate FCDO leadership. Ensure the team’s work is always communicated in a clear and impactful way to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Spot and take forward opportunities to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders, including Russia experts, open source intelligence analysts, data scientists and academics to enhance internal capability and analytical outputs.
Person Specification
It is essential in your application that you provide evidence and proven examples in each of the following Minimum Criteria as far as you are able to do so. These responses will be further developed and discussed with those candidates invited for interview.
Minimum Criteria
- Ability to read and understand in depth documents written in Ukrainian.
- In depth understanding of Ukrainian politics and media.
- Experience of providing high-quality analytical reporting on foreign affairs, security or Eastern European issues, including when source content is in foreign languages.
- Ability to constructively engage with diverse stakeholders to drive strategy forward and address big picture challenges.
- Ability to adapt to changing environments, work under pressure and deliver to tight timescales.
- Evidenced ability to line manage a team of analysts or expert researchers.
Behaviours
We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Changing and Improving
- Managing a Quality Service
- Delivering at Pace
Technical skills
We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Motivation questions will be asked at interview
- Technical questions will be asked at interview
Closing: 11:55 pm on Tuesday 27th September 2022
