Data Specialist for Public Administration Projects

Data Specialist for Public Administration Projects, AI Factory, CSSH Lab (RE3), Job title: Data Specialist for Public Administration Projects, AI Factory, CSSH Lab (RE3), The AI Factory, which utilizes MareNostrum5's specialized AI partition, relies on the secure and efficient management, sharing, and analysis of diverse and often sensitive datasets, including public administration and health data. We are seeking a Data Specialist with strong expertise in data governance, AI readiness, and public sector data infrastructures to join the Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Lab and work on projects with public administrations. The selected candidate will lead structured AI-readiness assessments of public administration data ecosystems, identify governance and infrastructure gaps, and define actionable upgrade pathways toward AI-ready environments. The objective is to support institutions in moving towards AI-ready public administration data environments and to enable the effective and responsible use of AI technologies.

This project is funded by the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility, in accordance with Council Regulation (EU) 2020/2094 of 14 December 2020, and regulated by Regulation (EU) 2021/241 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 February 2021, in the context of the "BSC AI Factory" project.

The BSC AI Factory project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101234399. The JU receives support from the European Union's Horizon Europe Programme and Spain, Portugal, and Türkiye. Key Duties

• Provide support to the coordination and the design and implementation of specialized data services related to the Public Administration Data Lab, integrated with the European AI Factories and Data Spaces, and EOSC data infrastructures.
• Establish and enforce documentation and description standards for data, models, and computational workflows according to EOSC-aligned (FAIR principles), machine-actionable frameworks to ensure interoperability, traceability, and reusability.
• Assist in the design and implement structured AI-readiness assessment protocols and diagnostic methodologies that can be reused across multiple public administration partners.
• Lead AI-readiness assessments of sensitive public administration data ecosystems, including datasets, metadata, governance structures, and computational workflows.
• Design and coordinate the implementation of data governance, data quality, and lifecycle management frameworks required for responsible AI deployment.
• Align AI-readiness and data governance recommendations with European and national regulatory frameworks (GDPR, AI Act, public sector digital governance frameworks).
• Define and coordinate AI adoption roadmaps aligned with institutional objectives, public sector regulations, and European digital governance frameworks.
• Advise on the design and evolution of data infrastructures, interoperability architectures, and lifecycle management frameworks, particularly for sensitive administrative domains (legal, education, labor, social services).
• Contribute to the development of reusable AI-readiness toolkits and structured assessment methodologies within the AI Factory initiative., * A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.

Development of the recruitment process

The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:

• Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
• Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.

The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.

In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.

The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.

At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment [at] bsc [dot] es. For more information, please follow this link.

• Education

• Bachelor's and/or Master's in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Information Science or a closely related field.

• Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience

• Experience working with public administrations or government institutions.
• Strong understanding of data governance, data management, and data quality frameworks.
• Strong understanding of public sector data governance constraints, including GDPR, sensitive data handling, and institutional accountability requirements.
• Experience with linking sensitive data such as education, labor market or social services data.
• Knowledge of EOSC-aligned standards for machine-actionable datasets (metadata standards aligned with FAIR principles, such as schema.org, DCAT, DDI, ODRL ) in real-world projects.
• Experience evaluating data infrastructure maturity and defining technical and organizational upgrade pathways toward AI-ready environments.
• Strong understanding of data provenance, traceability, and reproducibility requirements in AI-enabled systems.
• Understanding of AI and machine learning concepts, particularly their data requirements.
• Experience conducting needs assessments, organizational diagnostics, or capability evaluations.
• Ability to translate technical concepts into clear recommendations for non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience reviewing, understanding and documenting code and data pipelines.
• Experience in Python and/or other statistics programming languages.

• Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience

• Experience working within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) ecosystem or related FAIR data infrastructures.
• Experience describing models and computational workflows using machine-actionable metadata and provenance standards (e.g., model cards, workflow descriptors, RO-Crate workflows or similar).
• Experience using the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata schema is a plus.
• Experience supporting AI adoption projects in the public sector.
• Familiarity with AI governance, ethical AI, or regulatory frameworks.
• Experience working with large or complex institutional data environments.
• Knowledge of data infrastructure, interoperability standards, or data platforms.
• Experience designing or implementing data readiness or digital maturity frameworks.
• Experience working with privacy technologies packages/libraries.

• Competences

• Ability to work across technical, organizational, and policy domains.
• Strong problem-solving abilities and facilitation skills.
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Excellent command of English and another European language. Spanish and or/Catalan strongly desirable.
• Ability to work in complex environments.

• The position will be located at BSC within the Directors Department
• We offer a full-time contract (37.5h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures
• Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration
• Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
• Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
• Starting date: asap

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries. Look at the BSC experience: BSC-CNS YouTube Channel Let's stay connected with BSC Folks! We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured. We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences. If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team. Context And Mission The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is seeking a Research Engineer to join our Computational Social Science and Humanities Laboratory as part of the AI Factory initiative. The AI Factory is a European project accelerating AI adoption across industry sectors, particularly supporting SMEs and startups while strengthening the European innovation ecosystem.