About the job

Job summary

At Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), we supply and maintain vital equipment and services for the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force. Together, we deliver a vast range of essential defence programmes, and strive for what's next. Because it helps keep our military at the top of their game and our nation safe – for today, and tomorrow.

We offer 25+ days’ holiday, flexible and hybrid working, enhanced parental leave schemes, shopping discounts, and an exceptional employer pension contribution of around 27%, to help work, work for you.

Nationality, visas, and vetting: For security reasons this role is open to sole UK nationals only. A ‘sole UK national’ refers to an individual who holds citizenship solely in the UK, without dual citizenship or nationality from another country. We’re unable to offer visa sponsorship.

This role requires you to have lived in the UK for the last 10 years and obtain Developed Vetting (DV) security clearance. Clearance must be obtained without any caveats that prevent you from carrying out the role you have been recruited for. If it isn’t obtained or is obtained but with caveats that prevent you from carrying out the role, any conditional offer made to you will be withdrawn. Obtaining DV security clearance can be a lengthy process. You’ll join us once Security Check (SC) clearance is obtained, and then the more enhanced DV checks will continue after you’ve started your employment. If SC clearance isn’t obtained within 12 months, we reserve the right to withdraw any conditional offer made.

Job description

We are looking for talented, motivated people to join our growing multi-disciplinary team, with data analysis, data modelling, and digital engineering skills and knowledge.

As the landscape of threats and challenges evolves rapidly, our cohesive team must respond with a renewed focus on embedding technology into our operations.

We are working to reduce the time it takes to design and deliver equipment to the armed forces through the adoption of digital engineering techniques, to ensure the equipment we buy works as part of a coherent system with existing platforms within the UK Armed Forces, across NATO and with allies and industry.

To spearhead this transformation, we’ve established three Capability Centres. Each Capability Centre has a unique focus, playing a crucial role in developing our future transformative digital capabilities. Through collaboration and innovation, this exceptional team will help us maintain our strategic edge over adversaries, both now and in the future.

The Capability Centres offer excellent opportunities to work with and influence senior management within DE&S and the broader Defence Enterprise, fostering new ways of working and embracing cutting-edge technologies.

We hope you will join us, to help develop these approaches and to utilise new technologies, modelling, and analysis techniques, to equip the UK armed forces with the edge to protect our nation.

IMIT offer a range of on the job and structured training, however, if you already have experience and knowledge of other programming languages such as R, JavaScript, and SQL, it would be beneficial.

At DE&S, we champion flexible ways of working. 3 days attendance per week is required on site, to promote the benefits of face-to-face collaboration alongside flexibility of hours to support work-life balance.

What you’ll be doing

• Performing complex exploratory data analysis using tools and techniques to interrogate unfamiliar data sets, highlighting any discrepancies, and ensuring it is suitable for data exploitation.
• Developing and implementing machine learning models and algorithms to solve complex problems e.g. random forests, natural language processing, and neural networks as well as other ensemble methods to enhance predictive accuracy.
• Managing the development of updates to existing models and tooling and maintaining operational resilience and investigating complex errors and/or unusual results.
• Challenging, from a data science perspective and collaborate with other analytical professionals to provide collective insights and grow DE&S capability.
• Using intellectual curiosity to explore data, models, and software applications to support data mining, more efficient data manipulation and visualisation to support effective business decision making.
• Working with Architects to ensure solutions are aligned with Data Architectural strategy and direction.
• Gathering data requirements from stakeholders, interpreting data and data sets to fulfil requirements and provide insights from initial analysis to inform detailed requirements for deliverable solutions.
• Using generative AI techniques to develop innovative solutions for real-world applications.

Person specification

To be successful with your application, you'll need to show that you meet the following essential criteria:

• Significant level of experience in Data Science across multiple projects.
• Demonstrable experience of the Python coding language and familiarity with Anaconda ecosystem or similar environment and package management tooling.

In addition to the responsibilities above, the following technical competences and behaviours will be assessed at interview:

• Management Information (MI) and analytics - Practitioner
• Development and implementation – Supervised Practitioner
• Changing and improving – CSBC3
• Delivering at pace – CSBC3

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £42,600, Ministry of Defence contributes £11,502 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

Your application will go through the following stages of assessment:

1. Pre-sift - We will check that you meet any essential or eligibility criteria that are listed in the Person Specification section of this advert. On your CV, please clearly show how you meet the essential criteria.
2. Sift - Your CV will be assessed against the following categories, using a simple numerical scoring system: Key Achievements; Relevant Experience; Applied Knowledge and Skills

Please follow our guidance on CV writing for best chance of success.

1. Interview - If you're invited to interview, you'll be assessed against the Sift categories listed above, as well as the Technical Competences and Behaviours listed in the Person Specification section of this advert.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.