Ocean Environment Scientist - Marine Biology in Taunton

The UKHO is a Specialist Geospatial Centre for the Marine Environment as well as the national archive for maritime products. Our customers require expert advice, bespoke products, specialist services and assured data on the ocean environment to assist in their planning. To support this, the Ocean Environment Team within the Scientific Analysis Group acquires data from a variety of sources, reviewing and adding value to those data for subsequent use.

The purpose of this post is to provide the expertise necessary to utilise environmental data and provide an assessment of the environmental conditions likely to be encountered. This will be achieved through collaborations with external organisations and scientific communities. Utilising their technical knowledge and credibility, the post holder will be the technical expert in their area of specialism, leading and supporting UKHO projects where appropriate.

Ocean Environment Scientists engage with other specialists and both internal and external stakeholders in order to develop and maintain Subject Matter Expert knowledge and communicate relevant technical information to the team. For this role, we are looking for an Ocean Environment Scientist with a specialism in Marine Biology, bioacoustics and skills in big data analysis and data modelling.

As Subject Matter Experts, postholders will be actively involved, in partnership with the Team Leader/Manager in process improvement and wider changes driven by Business direction. This is an excellent opportunity to gain experience in professional delivery, whilst maintaining and developing your scientific expertise in a supportive yet dynamic environment. Attendance in the office is required in accordance with Business need – which is likely to be 50% of working time. Hybrid working is a non contractual and voluntary arrangement according to business need.

There is an opportunity of part-time hours for this role, the minimum being 30 hours per week. The post holder will undertake activities that fall within these four key areas:

• Development: The post holder will be tasked with the development of capabilities which will improve the customers tactical exploitation of the Ocean Environment. The post holder will develop a good understanding of the customers need for and use of environmental information and feedback from users is actively sought to inform development planning. New capabilities are delivered as projects led by the post holder.
• Data Analysis and Presentation: Data is obtained and analysed to create representative descriptions of the environment for situational awareness. The post holder will undertake analysis of data relevant to the teams tasking, to derive representative visualisations of the expected marine environmental conditions as well as improve analysis methodology in order to provide a better service, more efficiently. Methods and software tools used for analysis or presentation of results will be continually reviewed and updated to meet changing demands and improve services.
• Capability: Liaison with organisations (both UK and overseas) to meet the needs of assigned work and keep abreast of developments in marine environmental data and analytical techniques. Make the necessary arrangements to obtain data and provide this information as a dataset in a form readily usable by the customer. Develop a network of contacts throughout the academic/government/NGO community to facilitate the best available current scientific understanding and enable collaboration activities to enhance the team’s capability. Take part in outreach activities to raise the profile of the team as a leading supplier of maritime scientific data and expertise.
• Report Writing and Quality Assurance: The holder will be expected to produce technical reports to record methodology and results or to present a case for changes to working practices, ensuring documentation is maintained for all analysis work.

We are looking for candidates who can demonstrate the following:

• A postgraduate qualification and/or equivalent experience of working in Marine Biology or a related field (e.g. Bioacoustics, Biological Oceanography, Marine Ecology).
• Strong numerical ability and a deep knowledge and understanding of the principles of marine environmental science and bioacoustics.
• A deep working knowledge of data modelling as well as analysis and visualisation techniques applied to marine environmental data, including computer programming skills (experience creating and managing projects within MATLAB, R, BASH or Python).
• Recent experience working with commonly used data formats within the marine sciences, such as gridded NetCDF, csv, geotiff and shapefiles.
• Experience of working independently on a scientific project(s) and making informed evidence-based decisions.
• Excellent communication skills at all levels, both written and oral. Including the ability to undertake scientific literature reviews, extract relevant information and summarising for a non-expert audience.