We are recruiting a new team of PhD students for the Ask-JGI helpdesk to work from October 2025 until September 2026!
The Jean Golding Institute (JGI) for data science and AI offers a consultancy service to researchers via its Ask-JGI helpdesk. We offer one day of free support to all staff and doctoral students at the University of Bristol, for queries relating to data science, AI, and software engineering. The helpdesk is run by PhD students and supported by the JGI’s own team of data scientists and research software engineers.
What we’re looking for
New recruits will be part of a team with overlapping and complementary skills, who will work together to support researchers in a range of ways.
It is not expected that you will start with all the skills/experience that we are looking for the team to cover, however you should be enthusiastic about continuous learning and working outside your subject area.
Typical queries (and skills/experience you may want to highlight in your application) include:
- Troubleshooting – Collaborating with researchers from different disciplines and of varying expertise, to find out what they need to do to solve their problem.
- Study design and planning – Providing statistical advice on experimental design. Identifying potential data hazards and ethical issues.
- Data cleaning and management – Helping to develop pipelines to make raw data ready for analysis. Advice on data management plans and data governance.
- Data analysis – Recommending or providing support with tools and methods for modelling, AI/machine learning and statistics. This might involve multilevel modelling, bioinformatics, GIS, NLP, random forests, deep learning, use of LLMs, or mixed/qualitative methods.
- Programming – Technical support and coding in (primarily) Python or R. But this could include other tools like SQL, MATLAB, SPSS, STATA, NVivo, Excel, C, Rust, Bash scripts etc. Code review and code optimisation. Deployment to HPC.
- Best practices – Giving advice on best practices for writing reproducible research code and creating packages. Support with tools like Git, GitHub, virtual environments and Conda, Docker.
- Data communication – Help with data visualisation. Providing advice with dashboards or websites.
Applicants will need to be current full-time PhD students at the University of Bristol and will need to obtain approval from their primary supervisor. It is expected that applicants can commit on average 5-10 hours per month for 12 months. The team rotates responsibilities every fortnight and there are periods with a higher/lower volume of queries, so time commitments can vary throughout the year.
Expected start date is the week commencing Monday 29 September 2025, working ad-hoc approximately 5-10 hours per month for 12 months.
What’s in it for you?
You will gain experience/skills which will be useful for your future research or career outside academia:
- Technical skills – learning from one another and developing best-practice skills in data science, AI and research software engineering.
- Project management – managing and prioritising multiple queries and allocating them to fellow team members.
- Team working – chairing team meetings, minute-taking, and collaborating with other team members on queries.
- Communication – sharing your expertise with researchers (of all levels) from different disciplines.
- Adaptability – developing and applying your skills to new and difficult problems, outside your immediate subject.
This is a paid opportunity at Graduate Teacher – Level 1 for PhD students.
How to apply
Complete an online application form
The deadline to apply is Thursday 31 July 2025. We will assess applications at the start of August and hope to communicate a decision in mid-August.
The JGI aims to make data science, statistics and software engineering expertise accessible to all. We value diversity in our teams and so applicants from communities traditionally under-represented in data science, AI or research software engineering are strongly encouraged to apply.
If you have any questions about the role, email jgi-reseng@bristol.ac.uk with the subject “Ask-JGI recruitment”.
Testimonials from Ask-JGI team members
“Over the past year, I had the pleasure of working with the Ask-JGI team, and it was a truly enjoyable experience. The team was welcoming and supportive, and I had the opportunity to engage with researchers from a wide range of departments across the university, which broadened my perspective on different fields of study and enhanced my personal skills. I highly recommend joining this team!” – Yujie Dai, Digital Health CDT
“What I enjoy most about working at the Ask-JGI helpdesk is the chance to connect with and assist researchers from all kinds of academic backgrounds. I may not always have the immediate answer to queries, but what really counts is doing my best to help and being willing to keep learning along the way.” – Yueying Li, PhD student in Genetic Epidemiology
“Working with the Ask-JGI service has been incredibly rewarding. I genuinely enjoy contributing directly to researchers’ projects, witnessing the tangible impact of our support. The variety of challenges, from diving into complex data analysis to helping visualize findings, keeps every day engaging and fulfilling.” – Fahd Abdelazim, PhD student in Interactive AI, specializing in model understanding for Vision-Language models
“Being part of the Ask-JGI team is an excellent opportunity to improve communication skills over statistics/ data science tasks. As PGR students, most of us are accustomed to working within specialized areas of research, it is easy to overlook efforts and skills necessary for collaborating outside of those narrow fields of expertise. I have benefitted from working on the team to improve those skills.” – Mirah Zhang, PhD student in Geographic Data Science
“Working as an Ask-JGI data scientist has been a hugely rewarding experience. Each query involves supporting researchers from diverse specialisms across the University. It’s a great way to expose yourself to different technical challenges and research areas, and to explore new technologies that you haven’t worked with before.” – Daniel Collins, PhD student in Interactive AI focussed on multi agent AI systems