Ofcom Is Hiring a Data Scientist Apprentice in Manchester. Here Is What Is Actually Confirmed.
Ofcom — the regulator that oversees UK telecoms, broadcasting, post and, since 2023, online safety — has an open Level 6 Data Scientist degree apprenticeship in Manchester, closing 6 September 2026, salary £24,479 a year. Read the next section carefully, because Ofcom publishes less about this scheme than most of the other employers we cover, and we are not going to paper over the gaps with confident-sounding filler.
What is open today
- Apprentice Data Scientist, Level 6, Manchester, £24,479 a year, closing 6 September 2026.
The role sits inside Ofcom's Research and Intelligence team, which analyses market developments and consumer outcomes across the sectors Ofcom regulates. Apprentices work on data analysis, data manipulation, data visualisation and applied data science in support of that regulatory work.
What Ofcom does, and why the role matters
Ofcom holds statutory powers under the Communications Act 2003, the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, and — since October 2023 — the Online Safety Act 2023, which gave it new authority to supervise platforms' safety duties and to sanction or block services that fail to protect users, particularly children. A data role inside that regulator is not a generic analyst job; the outputs feed directly into decisions about companies most 18-year-olds use daily. Ofcom opened a Manchester technology hub at Circle Square in 2021, aiming for up to 150 roles there by 2025 — treat that target as historical context rather than a current headcount, since we could not find an updated 2025-2026 figure.
What we could not confirm
Being direct about this rather than smoothing it over:
- No named university partner or specific BSc title is published for this apprenticeship. Ofcom's general apprenticeships page lists subject areas — business administration, finance, data analytics, cyber security, economics — without naming Data Scientist specifically or a training provider.
- No entry requirements are stated anywhere — not GCSEs, not A-levels, not UCAS points. General UCAS guidance on apprenticeship entry requirements exists, but it is not Ofcom's stated bar and should not be read as one.
- No stage-by-stage application process is published. Ofcom confirms only that its apprenticeships are levy-funded, combine in-work training with 20% off-the-job study, and end in a portfolio-based final assessment.
- No applicants-per-place figure exists in any source we found.
If any of these matter to your decision to apply — and entry requirements probably do — the honest answer is to apply and ask directly, or contact Ofcom's recruitment team before the 6 September deadline, rather than rely on a stated bar that does not exist publicly.
What to actually do
- Do not wait for a published entry bar that may never appear. If you have a genuine interest in data and regulation, apply now — the deadline is close.
- Read up on the Online Safety Act before you apply, not for the interview but because understanding what Ofcom actually regulates will make your application material better than a generic "I like data" pitch.
- Ask about the training provider directly if that detail affects your choice between this and another Level 6 data apprenticeship — we could not confirm it and neither, on the evidence available, can you without asking.
- Track the deadline properly. Six days is not much room — use a tracker rather than a memory if you are running more than one application this week.
The part that matters
We would rather tell you what we could not find than fill the gap with something that sounds plausible. Ofcom is a real, serious regulator doing work that shapes the platforms you use — that part is well documented. The specifics of this particular apprenticeship's academic bar and training structure are thin in public sources, and the honest response to that is to say so, not to guess on your behalf.
ApprenticeWizard tracks every live apprenticeship and internship in the UK in one place, filterable by level, with a free application tracker so you never lose a deadline. Details in this article were taken from our database and Ofcom's official careers pages on 3 September 2026. See everything else open right now.