IT Practitioner

Who we are
We are the Met Office, the national meteorological service for the UK. We provide critical weather services and world-leading climate science, helping people make better decisions to stay safe and thrive.

Our services are delivered through exceptional scientific, technological and operational expertise. We have a team of excellent people, working to deliver extraordinary impact, making us one of the most trusted forecasters in the world.

Our values – it’s who we are:

We’re a force for good
We’re experts by nature
We live and breathe it
We’re better together
We keep evolving
Background
The Met Office’s vision is to be recognised as the best weather and climate service in the world. TIS are the programme within the Met Office responsible for the delivery and support of IT Services and Systems that enable the Met Office to deliver this vision. Within the Infrastructure & Operations part of TIS, the Corporate Database team is responsible for delivering and supporting database systems. The Corporate Database team provides database administration services for all corporate Oracle and PostgreSQL databases within the Met Office. These include those used for a number of key operational systems, as well as those providing internal services such as Finance. The post-holder would be expected to coordinate with other specialist resources within the wider team in order to provide a high-level of database service.

Assist other team members the setup, testing and acceptance of databases from development through to operational status, and help to provide ongoing technical support for databases in the production environment both for day to day and longer term project work.

Prepare and maintain documentation, monitoring of support requests and invlovement in resolving system faults.

The post holder will also be involved with investigations/problem resolution for some of the key elements of weather related product delivery.

Job Purpose
As our IT Practitioner, the key duties are:

Service Support:
Maintaining and monitoring the services. Assist with the delivery of effective and adaptable database administration services, ensuring both operationally and non-operationally supported databases meet project and/or customerexpectations.
Assist with installation, upgrade and configuration tasks, maintainenance of system security, perform back-up and recovery procedures in line with agreed best practice to deliver and maintain efficient and reliable databases.
Involvement in diagnosing and resolving database problems, including using database management tools, to meet the agreed service levels.
Getting a thorough understanding of effective Change, Incident & Problem Management.
Proactively addressing issues which have a wider impact on service delivery.
Maintaining procedures and other documentation for colleagues, other support teams, users, IT Operations and customers.
Workload Management:
Following local best-practice and/or guidelines, involvement in peer reviews of work undertaken and reviewing the documentation as necessary.
Team Working:
Work effectively and help to contribute to the success of the Corporate Database Team. Collect routine database performance statistics, maintenance of service reports and suggest areas for enhancement to monitor and drive continuous improvement.
Gain an understanding of complex technical information, enabling concise communication to non technical specialists including business colleagues and customers.
Gain an understanding of services & projects and carrying out activities to improve the services offered.

Responsibilities

Essential Qualifications, Skills & Abilities
A basic understanding of Oracle database technology, ideally version 12 and to some extent version 19, potentially including ASM, RMAN and regular database lifecycling.
A basic understanding of OEM and PostgreSQL pgAdmin console together with some Linux knowledge.
Great team-working skills and, when appropriate, the ability to work to your own initiative.
Ability to maintain working relationships with other teams at every level as non-siloed working is essential for the success of the project.
Capacity to produce and maintain documentation to support installation and troubleshooting for colleagues to follow, together with enthusiasm for “show and tell”.
An enthusiasm to deliver, get involved and take ownership of issues.
Desirable Qualifications, Skills & Abilities
Programming with Oracle PL/SQL and an understanding of performance tuning.
An ability to get to grips with day to day PostgreSQL management and an appreciation of upgrades/lifecycling.
Familiarity with Service Now, JIRA & Puppet.
Able to work with Office 365 and particularly Sharepoint.
Willingness to be potentially available out of hours for support call resolution.

Outstanding Civil Service Pension
Flexible hours and homeworking
Annual Leave starting at 27.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) rising to 32.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) after 5 years
Option to buy or sell up to 5 days per year of annual leave
Cycle to work scheme for the purchase of a bicycle and equipment for healthy, low carbon travel
Access to discounted shopping on a range of retail, leisure and lifestyle categories