Senior Data Engineer

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.

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.

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.

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Leadership

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Please explain how your technical skills and experience align with the data engineer role within the CBR data science capability.
• Please detail your experience in leading teams to deliver projects and develop capability

Benefits 

Dstl’s full range of great benefits can be found in the information pack which includes:

• Financial: An excellent pension scheme starting from 26% employer contribution (find out more here). In Year Rewarding Achievement bonuses and thank you vouchers. Rental deposit scheme and cycle to work scheme. 

• Flexible working: Working options include alternative working patterns, compressed hours, job shares and annualised hours

• Flexible working hours: Ability to bank hours in a 12 month reference period including the ability to accrue and use 3 days per calendar month. 

• Annual leave: A generous annual leave allowance starting at 25 days pro rata (rising to 30 after 5 years) plus 8 public holidays with the ability to buy/sell 5 additional days per annum.

• Family: Maternity, adoption or shared parental leave of up to 26 weeks with full pay, an additional 13 weeks statutory pay and a further 13 weeks unpaid

• Learning and Development: Encouragement and support on charterships, accreditations and access to fully funded apprenticeships up to level 7 (Masters Degree). Paid memberships with 2 relevant bodies/institutions. Employees have access to Civil Service Learning.

• Facilities: Onsite parking, EV Charging points, restaurants, cafés and gyms.

The information pack can be found attached to the job specification on Civil Service Jobs. 

Diversity 

We have a number of support networks to ensure all employees feel supported at work. These include the following:

• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Network

• Race, Faith and Culture Network

• Parents and Carer Support Network

• Alternative Working Network

• Gender Equality Network

• New Starters Network

• Enabled Network, for people with visible and non-visible disabilities.

For further information about Dstl please check out our LinkedIn page

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

Job contact :

• Name : dstlrecruitment@dstl.gov.uk
• Email : dstlrecruitment@dstl.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : dstlrecruitment@dstl.gov.uk