Junior Technical Solutions Engineer in Basingstoke

About the Role

We're a chemical manufacturing business actively modernizing our internal data systems and capability. This is a newly created role, forming a two-person team dedicated to that work. You'll work directly, day to day, with the person leading it, taking on administration of existing business systems, building new features to improve them, and developing entirely new pipelines and tools as business priorities demand.

This is an opportunity for someone interested in working in the field of data systems, automation, development, and AI solutions. The ideal candidate genuinely enjoys problem solving, learning, and applying modern technology solutions.

What You'll Start With

• Mapping: Learn the architecture of our existing systems by documenting how they currently connect.
• Maintenance: Use AI assistants to write simple scripts for data backups, user access updates, and system monitoring.
• Administration: You'll be responsible for looking after some systems in our workflow, ensuring they are kept up to date and operational.
• Small Tool Creation: Prompt AI to build internal automations that cut down manual administrative tasks.
• Component Upgrades: Use AI to rewrite or optimize features or modules within an existing system.

Requirements

While this is a junior position and you are not expected to have deep expertise, what we do need is a foundation to build from: comfort with basic programming concepts such as variables, functions, inputs and outputs, even if self-taught or from a non-CS background. From there, our intent is to invest real time in developing you into a highly capable generalist over the next few years.

None of the below needs to be second nature yet. We're looking for the instinct that gets you there with experience: discomfort with not knowing the answer to something, and curiosity about how things actually work underneath.

Must Have

• Basic maths and statistics, and good general technical literacy
• Basic knowledge of charts/graphs and visually representing data
• Foundational programming literacy (variables, functions, inputs/outputs)
• Comfort working across and learning a wide variety of technologies and software, rather than specializing in one
• Comfortability with poking around inside something you don't fully understand yet - you'll happily read an unfamiliar script or process and take a reasonable guess at what a piece of it is doing
• Detail-oriented: you validate that a solution actually does what it's supposed to before calling it finished, and you can explain why it works, even if you didn't write every line yourself

Who you are

• Comfortable working with ambiguous or incomplete information
• A genuine problem solver who takes initiative rather than waiting to be told what to do
• Speaks up when unsure, and proactively works toward the answer rather than sitting on it
• You're the type who wants to know why something broke, not just that it did - when an LLM's first fix doesn't work, your instinct is to figure out what actually happened and why it didn’t work
• Clear communicator, able to make a well-reasoned case for or against a particular approach
• A sense for business and efficiency. You notice when a process is wasteful or clunky, and you do something about it
• Genuinely enjoys continuous learning: new tools and systems should be exciting, rather than daunting

What You Can Expect From Us

This isn't a role where you do the same task on a loop. You'll have real space to learn, research, and follow an idea through properly before committing to it. While we always stay aligned with business priorities, you'll have a genuine level of creative freedom in how you get there.

You'll be working on a genuine frontier of applying AI tools to an established business, and actively shaping how business processes work. Both the scope of the role and what you're capable of within it are expected to grow substantially over time.

How to Apply

Alongside your CV, tell us about something you've built or solved using an AI/LLM tool and what prompts you used, even if something small or personal. A link, a description, or a quick walkthrough is fine. We're interested in seeing how you approach prompting and what you've actually done.