Junior Crisis Analyst: EMEA Region

We’re expanding our Real-Time Coverage (RTC) team, with a Junior Global Crisis Analyst based in the UK or Ireland! As a Crisis Analyst, you will use human curation to support our AI-first approach to alerts by gathering and corroborating social media chatter. This role would suit a graduate or someone early in their career.

Who we are

samdesk is a global disruption monitoring tool that delivers real-time crisis alerts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, powered by AI. We make sense of the world’s most valuable real-time data sources with the purpose to create a safer world. In 2021, samdesk closed a $13.5M Series A and is proudly headquartered in Alberta, Canada, with team members located all over the world. We are a growing team of dreamers and builders, passionate about building great products and services.

Please note that we currently only offer remote full-time roles, with days covering both weekdays, weekends and some public holidays. Candidates based anywhere in the UK or Ireland may be considered for this role.

Check us out! www.samdesk.io 

About the role

This role would suit a graduate or someone early in your career in this field. This is a demanding yet rewarding position providing critical live coverage of events occurring across the globe as part of our worldwide RTC team. Working hours are 7am-3pm or 8am-4pm, UTC+1. The working week will either be Tuesday - Saturday or Sunday to Thursday. Your commitment to this shift pattern is essential.

The samdesk platform is an AI tool that is not only the first to break the news but also provides the information and context needed by today's Fortune 500 organizations for their growing business continuity needs. samdesk alerts vary greatly and range from disruptive weather and power outages, to bomb threats and active shooters. The alert you send to a client about an active shooter threat at a shopping mall may prompt them to advise nearby customers and employees to seek shelter, lockdown stores and reroute deliveries away from the area. As such, clients trust us to provide them with up to date and accurate information in a timely manner.

Who we’re looking for

You are an engaged and enthusiastic individual who is eager to deliver samdesk’s high standard of direct client alerts.

• You are interested in breaking news and current affairs and understand the value of social media newsgathering, fact-finding and verification
• You are a skilled multi-tasker who is able to track several active threats at once and work in a busy breaking news environment
• You take responsibility for maintaining attention to detail while working quickly
• You are self-motivated and confident working independently and remotely as part of a diverse, globally distributed team
• samdesk can provide a life saving solution to our customers, so remaining calm and collected whilst making rapid fire decisions is critical to this role
• You have enthusiasm for all your projects and a willingness to be flexible and adapt to get the job done
• You have an interest in geopolitical issues and how they may impact businesses, people and governments
• You are a recent graduate or early in your career in this field

What you’ll do

The successful candidate will join our real-time coverage team and report to our regional team lead in the EMEA region. Your time zone means you’ll work with both our APAC and EMEA analysts.

• You’ll be responsible for the quality of our data output (alerts, content, information), and ensuring that what customers see is timely and relevant
• You’ll help us to understand which events are of higher impact and relevance to our customers, and use your experience and judgment to prioritize
• You’ll be responsible for collecting information in real time, verifying it, and building out the breadth and depth of our clients’ understanding of events, applying samdesk’s approaches and principles
• You’ll be comfortable putting our clients’ information needs first during a crisis. 
• You’ll contribute to shared resources to improve our content and information discovery processes and foster collaboration on the team.
• You’ll inform the rest of the team, in real time, on what’s happening, what they can expect, and how our customers might be impacted by it.

During a shift, you may have hundreds of incidents coming through the system to evaluate and make a decision on. You may only have 10 seconds to make a decision on each event - do our customers need to react to this?

To help you succeed, we provide a supportive team, the right tools, training and written standards to help guide you. For more impactful and significant events, you may be tasked to monitor these specifically in greater detail whilst your colleagues monitor separate events.

Although this is a remote role, you’ll work closely with colleagues across the world as part of the wider RTC team to support and advise each other on a variety of events and alerts. Whilst on shift you will connect with other Analysts in real time via an audio call to promote fluid communication and ensure events are monitored and enhanced in real time. 

For an idea of what a typical day for one of our Crisis Analysts looks like, click here.

We're looking for someone with:

• A relevant degree (political science, international affairs, journalism etc.) or demonstrated experience in preparing real-time reports or analysis for crisis management or in a newsroom environment
  • Security Operations Center analyst, intelligence analyst, emergency dispatcher, breaking news/OSINT reporter etc.

Bonus points if you have:

• Worked in the corporate security or intelligence industries
• Worked in a newsroom or OSINT environment 
• Fluency in other languages 

Working hours and flexibility

The nature of this role means we need to ensure continuous coverage of active events. As such, this role requires you to be “plugged-in” and working on our dashboard during your shift. To ensure continuous coverage, analysts must communicate with one another anytime they want to step away from their workstation. Lunch schedules and shift times are also agreed in advance to ensure appropriate cover is maintained.

This doesn’t mean we can't offer flexibility. Provided there is good communication and adequate coverage, analysts are free to plan meetings and work on projects if needed by working these into an agreed schedule. We also provide time at the start of your shift for admin tasks like booking leave, catching up on samdesk briefings and reading in on events overnight to ensure you are up to speed and aware of events likely to impact our clients.

There is a firm requirement that you will be required to work the hours indicated in this ad, matching the relevant time zone. Our roster is planned in advance and relies on analysts working the assigned shifts. Further information about the shift pattern can be discussed at the interview stage.

What’s in it for you?

• The salary band for this role is GBP 35,000 - 39,000 or EUR 41,000 - 45,000
• Work with a committed and passionate team of innovators at a fast-growing startup
• We view this role as a career building opportunity as you’ll work with cross functional teams and the world’s most notable brands, selling a life-saving solution
• A seat on the rocket ship 🚀 - buckle up!

You must include a cover letter in your application:

• Applicants who do not submit a cover letter will not be considered. Tell us about you and why we should select you to be added to the talent pool.

• A note on generative AI
  • This role will involve working with AI-generated data. For the purposes of this application, however, we ask that you do not use Chat-GPT or other generative AI tools. The application and interview process are intended to let us learn more about you as an individual. We will review and discard applications using generative AI to complete either screening questions, written assessments, or to prepare your cover letter.