About the job

Job summary

We are looking for an experienced data engineer to join the Chemical, Biological and Radiological (CBR) Division data science and software capability to continue to develop and utilise novel techniques and solutions across the CBR division and wider laboratory.

The role sits within the Statistical Data Science and Software Team in the CB Advice Group. The team supports a diverse range of projects including the development of cutting edge modelling research and software development for CBRN decision support tools, development of novel statistical analysis and use of cutting edge data science techniques for chemistry and biology unique to Dstl. The capability provides support across the division providing and developing best practice, providing advice on tools and techniques and helping to oversee technical work with our industry and academic partners.

Dstl recognises the importance of diversity and inclusion as people from diverse backgrounds bring fresh ideas. We are committed to building an inclusive working environment in which each employee fulfils their potential and maximises their contribution.

Job description

In this role you will:

• Lead small teams to undertake a range of tasks across a range of stakeholders to deliver high impact outcomes.
• Work with others to deliver to projects solving difficult technical problems and presenting to technical leaders in the most appropriate format
• Exercise good judgement to reach evidence based conclusions and decisions supported by analysis.
• Keep abreast of the latest developments in data science & engineering to actively contribute to capability development.
• Support customers and project teams to understand where data science and engineering can enable projects to add new value and promote innovation.
• Collaborate with Industry and Academia to ensure that the tasks we place remain on track, are of high quality and receive the benefit of internal expertise.
• Guide and direct the work of others, through technical leadership, to ensure delivery of high impact science and technology.
• Review approaches and outputs ensuring they are technically robust, and follows legal and ethical requirements.

We will support your career development by:

Offering a variety of opportunities to keep up-to-date with the latest developments, through training and development, attending and presenting at conferences, and working closely with industry and academic colleagues to deliver cutting edge, novel tools and techniques.

Person specification

We need great people! We're looking for people who have:

• A driven, motivated and enthused attitude dedicated to learning new skills and working within a multi-disciplinary team.
• A passion for programming in modern languages, and a solid understanding of relevant architectures
• The ability to apply critical thinking and creative problem solving to a variety of data sets with a chemical, biological and people focus.
• A natural curiosity and independent drive to research, experiment and understand
• Enthusiasm and experience in applying relevant techniques to complex problems.
• Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams to undertake data driven projects

 We are also looking for people with these desirable skills and experiences:

• Handling, curating, manipulating and analysing complex, high volume and high dimensionality data, with an emphasis on interoperability and standardisation.
• Knowledge and experience in databases, cloud and data management technologies.
• Data engineering – exploiting distributed computing techniques such as Hadoop or Spark, multi-core/distributed processing, SQL and NoSQL database systems.
• Containers and container orchestration technologies e.g. Docker and Kubernetes.
• Story-telling and data visualisation – including the visualisation of insights drawn from data and building of data driven products.
• Mid-level programming; building prototypes and understanding existing code bases, rather than writing highly scalable production code.
• Version control (i.e. Git) and agile methodologies (e.g. scrum, tools such as JIRA)
• Design and implementation of data models and data pipelines, using best practice to generate reproducible work.

Qualifications

Proven experience and / or a degree qualification in a relevant degree such but not limited to: Data Engineering, statistics, data science, mathematics, physics and computer science.

Important Information

Our work in defence, security and intelligence requires our employees to be UK Nationals who are able to gain a high level of security clearance to undertake the projects we are involved in to protect us from security threats. For this reason, only UK Nationals will be able to apply for this role. If you are an international or dual-national candidate, and you think you have the skills we need, please consider applying to any of our government, security or defence partners.

This role will require full UK security clearance and you should have resided in the UK for the past 5 years. For some roles Developed Vetting will also be required, in this case you should have resided in the UK for the past 10 years.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £35,970, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory contributes £9,711 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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Sifting will take place once the vacancy has closed and Interviews will be held in January via MS Teams. 

We want you to have your best chance of success in our recruitment process, so If at any stage of the application process you would like help or assistance please contact the Dstl Recruitment Team dstlrecruitment@dstl.gov.uk and we will do all we can to support you.

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

Open to UK nationals only.

This job is not open to candidates who hold a dual nationality.

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.