Data Engineers

Job content

Apply here:

www.womenindata.co.uk/job/data-engineers-dstl-salisbury/

Portsdown West, Fareham - PO17 6AD, Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury - SP4 0JQ,

About the job

SUMMARY

Do you have experience in applying data engineering skills to real world data tasks, are you passionate about applying your expertise to participate in innovative analysis and research within the UK Government’s Defence and Security domains? Are you interested in developing your own technical career in an exciting and growing area? If the answer is yes, we want to hear from you!

Dstl’s Exploration Division identifies and accelerates the delivery of transformative technology, systems, concepts and strategy for Defence and Security. Our Data Science teams enable this through the application of novel approaches to a variety of data-rich and complex Defence and Security problem areas to support strategic and operational level decision makers. We achieve this by using our own expertise; working in partnership with industry and academia; advising customers and stakeholders on valuing and exploiting data; and helping others to develop their own skills. Our data scientists work very much as a community. We work in multidisciplinary teams as the norm, valuing the different skillsets and experience our people bring together.

Here in the Transformative Technologies & Techniques group in Exploration Division, we are currently engaged in ensuring a step-change in how the Division, Dstl and our customers and Stakeholders make best use of our data. We would like to continue to the grow our capability, in particular Data Engineering and use of Cloud Computing both in terms of its size and variety.

Dstl is an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence, and you will be working closely with stakeholders from across MOD and the armed forces – most likely, you will spend part of your working week working with them directly.

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.

We particularly welcome female and ethnic minority applicants and those from the LGBTQI community, as they are under-represented within Dstl at these levels.

JOB DESCRIPTION

As a Level 4 Data Engineer we are looking for people with the following:

• Good potential and willingness to learn.

• A level of knowledge equivalent to Microsoft’s Azure Fundamentals or

Amazon’s Cloud Practitioner certifications.

• A solid understanding of relational databases and Structured Query Language (SQL) and an awareness of the full range of other database types, identifying where these are used, ideally with some practical

experiences in some subsets.

• Python skills are essential, so you will need to understand the basics of the language – but there will be time made available to develop your skills.

• Understanding of Git to version control our code, you should understand the basics already.

As a Level 5 Senior Data Engineer we are looking for people with the following:

• Experience equivalent to Microsoft’s Azure Data Engineer - Associate or Amazon’s Big Data Specialty and ideally hold one of those certifications.

• Ability to take on responsibility for setting up and maintaining data pipelines, while delegating increasing amounts of work to junior colleagues as they develop their skills.

• Experience in Python programming, able to help others understand the language when they encounter problems or unexpected behaviour.

• Knowledge of at least the basics of some other languages as well.

• Practical experience with Infrastructure as Code, e.g. with Terraform, to help us maintain auditable and version-controlled infrastructure, code and data.

• A willingness to share your skills and knowledge with more junior members of the team (or even colleagues with different backgrounds from other parts of the organisation).

As a Level 6 Principal Data Engineer we are looking for people with the following:

• You will be comfortable working with projects and stakeholders to build a data engineering capability from scratch, or from an immature state:

• You will need to use your knowledge of data engineering to advise on the choice & design of infrastructure and project resourcing requirements.

• At the start of new projects, you will likely be solely responsible for developing the initial data products while training colleagues in the required skills.

• You will work with the data owners to understand their organisation, including their legal and ethical frameworks as well as their purpose and strategy – and share that knowledge with the rest of the team.

• In addition to project work you will be working to develop the division’s Data Engineering capability and capacity in conjunction with other Divisions in Dstl and similar capability areas across MOD and the rest of government.

• You will be able to advise and support others in all of the above skills and ensuring that we keep up with evolving requirements.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Our immediate requirements come from a project that will use Azure, but we expect that if you know AWS you will be able to pick up Azure. We also have projects using AWS and expect to use both regularly going forward into the future.

In this role you will:

• Create impact whilst supporting strategic and operational decision-making.

• Design and implement data models and data pipelines, using best practice to generate reproducible work.

• Explore and visualise data to present its story in a meaningful way to technical and non-technical audiences.

• Keep abreast of the latest developments in data engineering and actively contribute to capability development.

• Support customers and project teams to understand where data engineering enable projects to add new value.

• Work with Industry and Academia by collaborating with them to ensure that the tasks we place remain on track, are of high quality and receive the benefit of internal expertise.

• Maintain an understanding of data engineering outside Dstl by influencing and contributing to industry, academia, partners across government and international research collaboration initiatives.

• Inform across Government, including potentially briefing senior officials to ensure robust decision making within government.

• 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.

The balance across these will vary across the different career levels with the focus being towards the top of the list at Level 4, and bottom of the list at Level 6.

In all cases, Dstl will support continued professional development.

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.

BEHAVIOURS

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

• Leadership
• Developing Self and Others
• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving

TECHNICAL SKILLS

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

• Please explain your coverage of skill in the following areas: Python, Cloud (AWS/Azure), Data Modelling and SQL, NoSQL, Creation and maintenance of data pipeline,
• Please explain your coverage of skill in the following areas: Critical thinking and problem solving and an ability to convey complex issues in a clear and concise way to non-experts in verbal, visual and written form.