Data Scientist Placement

The Met Office is delighted to open our advertising for a number of Industrial Placements, which will commence from July 2025 until July 2026.

We're looking for an exceptional Data Scientist: Ancillaries for Parametrization Development Industrial Placement to help us make a difference to our planet.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Met Office on a 12-month Year in Industry placement, developing your skills and knowledge and ensuring you gain the most value possible from your experience with us. You will have the opportunity to network with our cohort of Industrial Placements all over the Met Office and understand what career opportunities we can offer you after you graduate.

As our Data Scientist: Ancillaries for Parametrization Development Industrial Placement, the 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, 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.

World changing work

From science to technology, from meteorology to management, and from planning to communication, our expertise helps us stand out as the authority on weather accuracy and climate prediction. We help individuals, industries and government to make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. This is the Met Office. This is who we are.

• 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

Your world of expertise

Our Industrial Placement scheme offers ambitious and capable undergraduates the opportunity to gain valuable experience working alongside diverse and highly skilled experts in their field. You'll be working on projects that really matter and will make a difference.

You will work within a team of parametrization developers in Atmospheric Processes and Parametrizations (APP), where you will collaborate on mining the latest sources of observational data to add new science into existing schemes, while developing your understanding of the process that occur in the land and atmosphere.

The Met Office uses its Unified Model to carry out weather forecasts globally and regionally and to perform climate projections on seasonal to centennial timescales. Recent increases in spatial resolution also mean that our weather forecasting systems represent more surface and atmospheric processes and their interactions, which can become challenging, e.g. in complex orographic areas. Global data that describe the characteristics of the land surface properties (e.g., whether the land is bare, urbanised or covered by fields or trees, or if there is vegetation, how tall and dense it is) is stored as 'ancillary' files.

Model accuracy heavily depends on the quality of the input surface ancillary files (i.e. how realistic and up to date they are), and it is essential to minimise errors in these surface fields. New very high-resolution (i.e. 10-100 m) surface datasets (e.g., ITE land cover and ESA WorldCover) based on satellite observations are now frequently released to the community (e.g., ESA, or the Copernicus programme). You will collaborate on data mining the latest sources of observational data to add new science into existing parametrization schemes and ancillary datasets.

Your key duties

• You will collaborate on data mining the latest sources of observational data to add new science into existing parametrization schemes and ancillary datasets.
• You will develop a traceable quality-assured process for the generation of ancillary information: from the original observations, through various post-processing steps, all the way to files used for operational weather forecasting and climate applications for use by our customers.

Why join us

Our work is life-changing, often life-saving and always life-enhancing. The Met Office is accredited as a 'Great Place to Work UK 2023' and in addition has achieved a place on both the UK's 'Best Workplaces in Tech' and 'Best Workplaces for Women' lists.

Whilst this is a temporary position until July 2026, there is potential for it to develop into an opportunity to join our Graduate Development scheme once you have completed your University studies.

Your package includes:

• Your salary will be £25,606
• Annual Leave starting at 27.5 days
• Access to discounted shopping, inclusive of retail, leisure and lifestyle brands

Essential Criteria, skills and experience:

Experts by nature - you must be studying for an undergraduate degree with a strong background in a STEM subject e.g., data sciences, applied mathematics, physical sciences or computing.Keep evolving - you can demonstrate you have an understanding of modern data science techniques. Experts by nature - you have experience of reading in and manipulating large data sets in a Linux environment. Experts by nature - you have experience of scientific programming, ideally with Python. You embrace our culture of 'better together' - you have excellent verbal and written communication reflecting an ability to listen, engage and clearly communicate with a varied audience, and to facilitate good teamwork. You can demonstrate you 'keep evolving' - you have excellent organisational skills with the ability to prioritise effectively.

How to apply

If you share our values, we'd love to hear from you! Click apply to begin your application. Please complete your career history and provide evidence against each of the essential criteria in the supporting statement questionnaire. We recommend candidates use the CARL method (Context, Action, Result and Learning) for presenting evidence of experience and skills.

Closing date: 08/01/2025 at 23:59. Please note we often receive a high volume of applications, but we will contact everyone who applies once the closing date as past. Interviews will be completed by 25/02/2025.

For additional guidance on our recruitment process and how to apply please look at our approach to recruitment page on our careers site.

How we can help

If you're considering applying and need support to do so, please get in touch. 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.

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Location: Exeter, GB

Posted Date: 11/28/2024