AMS PSR

On behalf of the Met Office, we are looking for a Scientific Software Engineer (Python) (Inside IR35) for a 6 month contract based hybrid in Exeter once every 3 weeks.

Are you an experienced Software Engineer with experience and knowledge within a mathematical, physical or computational science or related discipline? This role may be of interest to you.

SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.

Job Purpose:

The focus of this role will be creating and maintaining the data pipelines for the forecast production (inference), visualisation and verification tasks and makes the outputs from those tasks available to users (research, operational meteorologists). This will involve setting up workflows and related infrastructure on the organisation and cloud platforms, and supporting the creation of curated datasets for use in further analysis and research.

Your key duties

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

• Plan, 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
• Support Met Office scientists to develop high-quality code and implementations of their research, lead activities to develop their capabilities
• Influence and negotiate with stakeholders to understand their requirements and ensure that forecast services fully meet their needs

Essential Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• Experience and knowledge in a mathematical, physical or computational science or related discipline
• Software development: Experience of leading significant scientific software developments and maintaining scientific software applications across multiple or complex platforms and solving complex software coding problems in Python.
• Software quality: Evidence of promoting and applying best practice in software quality assurance, such as version control, standards, testing, and reviewing, to scientific software applications.
• Evidence of proactively applying your software development knowledge and understanding of the wider context of the capabilities and needs of your working area to inform strategic planning.
• Evidence of excellent written and oral communication skills with the ability to understand user needs and communicate complex scientific and technical information to a range of audiences, which increased the impact of your work.
• Strong team player with the ability to work as a dynamic and productive member of a multi-disciplinary team to deliver projects, including leading, influencing and supporting a small team on a specific science project and demonstrable experience of collaborating with other teams or external organisations/customers.

Desirable Criteria

• Degree and or postgraduate qualifications in a mathematical, physical, computational science or related discipline and/or equivalent experience.
• Experience of using one or more of the following: Fortran, C, C++, O-O programming, software design, OpenMP, MPI, netCDF, cloud technologies.
• Experience in migrating software from old technology and software standards to modern equivalents.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, the Met Office guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Commitment

The Met Office guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".