The Bank of England has been increasingly taking interest in digital currencies and has also recently discussed the possibility of a central bank issued digital currency (CBDC).

In a move to spearhead this effort, the central bank is looking for an Economic Research Lead for its Digital Currencies Team that leads the Bank’s research on CBDC. The project seeks to examine CBDC from a technological, economic, and regulatory/legal perspective and assessing whether universal access to electronic central bank money is desirable.

According to the description, the job has five elements that includes doing own research work/intellectual leadership/original thinking, interacting with other researchers both inside the Bank and in academia, stimulating and co-ordinating relevant research, making policy recommendations, leading and project managing the Bank’s internal economic work on CBDC, and managing and developing one staff member.

“You [the job holder] will work closely with other team members that are investigating the feasibility of a CBDC, analysing the potential use of distributed ledger technology for a CBDC. The team of 4 analysts/work stream leads and senior manager reports up through the Note Directorate and to a cross Bank CBDC Research Steering Committee”, it said.

Interested candidates can apply until 15th September 2016. The complete job description and requirements can be found here.

The BoE recently published a working paper that stated that central bank issued digital currencies could raise gross domestic product (GDP). However, in the July meeting held by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords (Parliament's upper house), Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent said that CBDC is “a long way off” due to technological barriers along with the fact that it would require major restructuring of the entire financial system.