Research Software Engineer

Ordnance Survey

Location: Southampton
Salary: £45,951-51,357
Closing Date: 03 September 2020
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WORK PERMIT:
All applicants must be based in the UK and confirm that they are able to prove their eligibility to work in the UK.

Job Description

Research Software Engineer

As a country and globally, were all experiencing challenging times right now, but Ordnance Survey (OS) continues to support the nation with our accurate geospatial data and services. As an organisation we are embarking on an ambitious growth strategy in location data, insight and services. Innovating our products, services and technology to benefit our customers, businesses and people across Great Britain and globally. In order to do this, we want to continue adding new skills and capabilities to our business and even in these tough times, were able to use technology to recruit talent to OS.

This is an exciting opportunity to work alongside the Chief Geospatial Scientist to develop a new research environment to support Ordnance Surveys external research programme. Our research programme mostly comprises a portfolio of PhD and postdoc research projects at universities around the Britain and further afield. Our research also reaches into technology demonstration and implementation projects in Britain and internationally.

OSs role is to make a real difference to lives, communities and businesses everywhere. We are developing nationally critical data hosting platforms, working at the forefront of simulation and modelling systems for the next generation of connected and autonomous vehicles and creating new international mapping offers based on machine learning. Research is critical to driving forward and understanding and capability in these any many other fields.

Do you have experience in creating cutting edge innovation capability and turning this into new services and products that drive business value? If youre a skilled Software Engineer, particularly with experience in a research environment, this is a fantastic opportunity to join our fun and dynamic Research team at Ordnance Survey. Come and join an organisation thats individually talented and collectively powerful, where youll have the space to take your career in in an exciting new direction.

About the role

We are looking for a Research Software Engineer to join the established and highly successful Research team within Ordnance Surveys Proposition and Innovation (P&I) Group. P&I is a new function within OS and consists of over 100 professionals, delivering a world leading innovation, propositions, data and product management capability.

You will be responsible for creating and managing a research e-infrastructure to support quicker and more standardised set-up of new research projects, and to ingest and curate the outputs of these projects for re-use. You will support new projects from proposal to inception, particularly advising on and, where necessary, creating suitable data and systems to support research projects, individually or in persistent test environments. This is not an IT support role - the post-holder will also engage in technical R&D, developing novel technical solutions and environments to support developing science and solutions and taking part in research projects. Your work will be carried out in the wider context of OSs technical infrastructure and so the post-holder will need to liaise within OS so that research outputs are as well tuned

as possible to fit existing systems.

Focus points of the role are to provide leadership in developing the technical infrastructure for our research, ensuring OS gets best value from its research investment; assisting in the development and coordination of research strategy; and to act as a thought leader and recognised research technology expert in OS, academia and the industry. We see the role holder developing relevant external links, for example to the academic Research Software Engineer profession as recognised by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Your work will contribute to long-term delivery of the businesss strategy and new capabilities whilst also delivering on short-term objectives. In addition to research and development, an important aspect of this role is the enthusiastic promotion of the teams activity to gain the support of our many stakeholders and to drive discussion in the business about trends in computing infrastructure that should be considered for our future systems.

Responsibilities

Researches, designs and assembles large and/or complex datasets from a range of sources to meet business requirements

Designs and builds infrastructure required for ingestion, processing, storage and access to data and software

Identifies opportunities to automate solutions and reduce manual effort, and maximises business value through doing so

Creates tools and environments to support data science and analytics

Plays a technical role in research projects

Provides expert geospatial data-related support to business stakeholders and external research collaborators

Leads on collaborative work with internal and external partners to identify, develop and implement best-practice for working with and joining up data

Interface with an engineering development team that has been set up to create a robust and scalable capability based on your outputs.

Provide thought leadership & drive best practice, engaging across industry, government and academia to develop delivery partnerships

Essential skills

Ideally you will have experience in developing and managing computing environments to enable science research, preferably connected to geospatial science. You should have a strong problem-solving ethos, a knack for analysis, and be a strategic leader.

To be the successful person you will need to be able to demonstrate the following:

Proven experience as a Research Software Engineer, or similar role

Strong senior stakeholder engagement, strategy and management skills

Proven track record in supporting the effective delivery of R&D projects

Technical development skills (including databases & coding, with at least one of: Python, Scala, R), preferably in a research setting

Excellent ability to communicate and present complex subject matter in an accessible manner

Desirable skills

Good understanding of coud application hosting and development in Microsoft Azure

Experience with Spatial Databases (PostgreSQL/PostGIS)

Use of geospatial libraries (GDAL/OGR, GEOS, GeoTools, etc.)

Experience of handling very large datasets with big data frameworks like Apache Spark or Hadoop

The good stuff we offer:

We want you to love what you do. Thats why our benefits package rewards a job well done.

Salary £45,951-51,357 depending on experience

Performance-related bonus

A great pension scheme

37-hour working week, flexible working, part-time and job-share considered

25 days annual leave (30 days after five years) bank holidays and an extra three days over Christmas on us!

Training & development. Were a restless bunch, always looking for new ways to innovate with location information, to give our customers what they need. Your skills could help take it further. It is important to us that you have opportunities to learn and develop your skills. We offer: In-house training, a variety of masterclasses, bespoke training, study leave, access to learning resources and Professional membership subscriptions

Paid volunteer day

Bike to Work scheme (with secure bike storage and excellent changing facilities)

Free onsite parking

On-site nursery

Very generous staff benefits including over 500 discounts from national stores

Wide variety of clubs and interest groups including sports, crafts, womens development network, LGBT+ network, disability awareness group and environmental group

Location: This role will be based at our Headquarters in Southampton but we are happy to discuss flexible working arrangements.


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