About the job

Job summary

We’re looking for an exceptional Scientific Software Engineer - Industry Post-Processing to help us make a difference to our planet.

This job may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in the office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and the location advertised will be your contractual place of work.

Our opportunity is full time, 37 hours per week, but we would also consider applicants wishing to work a minimum of 3 days per week/22.2 hours per week and we will also try our best to consider those intending to work a job share.  Our people are at the heart of what we do and we'll do our best to agree a working pattern that works for everyone.

Job description

We provide critical weather services and world-leading climate science to deliver extraordinary impact and benefit across the globe. Our work helps people make better decisions to stay safe and thrive.

The Industry Science and Consultancy area is made up of a mix of Scientists, Scientific Consultants and Scientific Software Engineers with a range of backgrounds and different academic/career experiences – we do not all come in with a meteorology background, but we do all share a passion for taking weather and climate information and making it useful, usable and used.

As both individuals and teams we deliver high quality, impactful outputs, whilst ensuring we work together in a positive, collaborative and supportive way; understanding we all have lives and responsibilities beyond our jobs, respecting each other, benefiting from our differences and building and developing both our own and others’ skills to progress as a team and in our own careers.

The focus of the Industry Science and Consultancy area is to innovatively apply our world-leading weather and climate science to ensure our customers can make the best possible use of meteorological information in their decision making. At the heart of this is our Post-Processing Applications team, working with our customers to understand the challenges they face and researching and developing bespoke forecast capabilities to solve these critical industry problems.

Together:

• We’re a force for good - focusing on our environmental and social impact
• We’re experts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better
• We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making
• We’re better together - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater
• We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers

Find out more about our values - https://bit.ly/3fokaRD

Job Purpose:

If successful, you will develop an excellent understanding of how weather and climate information is used in industry across the surface transport, energy, retail and infrastructure sectors. Your work will combine this with your relevant scientific and technical background to develop and support the next generation of weather forecast services for existing Met Office customers and new opportunities, for example in the fast-moving Connected and Autonomous Vehicle sector or supporting the UK’s clean energy transition.

Forming a crucial part of the team, you will work in a dynamic and multidisciplinary environment and with a range of teams from across the Met Office: exploiting the Met Office's scientific and technical capability to build new production processes for services and to implement new scientific models; including using machine learning techniques. You will investigate how to exploit cloud computing technologies to build scale and efficiency into our operational services, supporting our scientists across Industry Science and Consultancy in the deployment of high-quality technical implementations of their research into emerging applications for weather and climate data.

Your work will include a variety of software development, IT system development and quality assurance related activities, including:

1. Design and develop operational data services exploiting cloud computing technologies to efficiently produce forecasts and contribute to setting the strategic direction for production of data services.
2. Support Met Office scientists to develop high-quality code and implementations of their research, lead activities to develop their capabilities.
3. Influence and negotiate with stakeholders to understand their requirements and ensure that forecast services fully meet their needs.
4. Collaborate with a motivated team to deliver projects that solve real world challenges.

Person specification

Essential Qualifications, Skills & Abilities:

If you are unsure on where your skills and experiences sit between Scientific Software Engineer (this advert) or Foundation Scientific Software Engineer (alternative advert) you can apply at more than one level and you will then be assessed against the relevant sets of criteria.

Although these criteria are essential to the role, we appreciate everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and encourage applicants to apply even if they consider one or two areas may be slightly weaker than others.

1. Software development: Experience of software development in a scientific, engineering or enterprise application.
2. Software quality: Evidence of applying best practice in quality assurance, such as version control, testing, and reviewing.
3. Experience of solving complex software coding problems.
4. Evidence of effective communication (for example, written, verbal & listening) to a variety of audiences.
5. Team and customer support: Evidence of team working skills, and evidence of customer support and training.
6. Experience of coding in Python.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £32,100, Met Office contributes £8,640 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

If you share our values, we’d love to hear from you. Apply below using your CV and a Cover Letter/Supporting Statement which evidences how you meet each of the essential criteria - we recommend candidates use the CARL (Context, Action, Result and Learning) method for presenting evidence of skills.

Closing date 20/03/2024 at 23:59 with interviews commencing from 04/04/2024. You will hear from us once the closing date has passed.

If successful, please note we are unable to offer expenses for travel to your normal place of work. This post is contractually aligned to Exeter HQ, please ask at interview if you would like extra clarity on how often this requirement is likely to be.

How we can help:

If you are considering applying and need support to do so, please contact us via careers@metoffice.gov.uk. You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario-based activity. You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident Scheme. To be invited to interview/assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.

We understand that great minds don’t always think alike and as an equal opportunities employer we welcome applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code.

We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK - please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible. You will need to achieve full security clearance within your first 6 months with us.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. 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

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission. 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.