Weather Impacts Industrial Placement 2023

The Met Office is delighted to open our advertising for a number of progressive Industrial Placements, which will commence from July 2023 until July 2024.

We’re looking for an exceptional Weather Impacts Industrial Placement to help us make a difference to our planet.

Our Weather Impacts Industrial Placement will work a hybrid pattern of homeworking and from our Exeter HQ, with a salary of £20,048 in line with planned increase to National Living Wage from April 2023, plus amazing benefits. We expect all placements to work in a hybrid fashion, with ideally at least one day per week on site at Exeter HQ .

Why should I choose the Met Office?

• Flexible hours and hybrid working
• Annual Leave of 27.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) and an option to buy or sell up to 5 days per year of annual leave
• Access to discounted shopping on a range of retail, leisure and lifestyle categories

Who we are

Right across the world, every single day, people make decisions based on the weather. We have a strong purpose and provide critical weather services and world-leading climate science, helping people make better decisions to stay safe and thrive.

Our exceptional people deliver scientific, technological and operational expertise, working together to deliver extraordinary impact, making us one of the most trusted forecasters in the world.

Our Industrial Placement programme offers ambitious and capable undergraduates the opportunity to gain valuable experience working alongside diverse and highly skilled experts in their field. You’ll be working on projects that really matter and will make a difference. Whilst the placement is a temporary position until July 2024, there is potential for it to develop into an opportunity to join our Graduate programme after you finish your studies.

Together

• We’re a force for good - focusing on our environmental and social impact
• We’re experts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better
• We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making
• We’re better together - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater
• We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers

Job purpose

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Met Office on a 12-month Year In Industry placement, developing your skills and knowledge and ensuring you gain the most value possible from your experience with us. You will have the opportunity to network with our cohort of Industrial Placements all over the Met Office and understand what career opportunities we can offer you after you graduate.

As a member of the Weather Impacts Team you'll support one of our critical activities - the evaluation of automated hazard impact models that support Impact-based National Severe Weather Warnings. A prerequisite for this research is the automated collection of societal impact observations (e.g. injuries and displacement, damage and destruction of infrastructure and property, disruption to transport networks, denial of access to critical services) that occur as a result of severe weather. These observations can be acquired from a range of online information sources (e.g. news and social media; humanitarian agencies) using data science techniques (e.g. Natural Language Processing).

This exciting and novel area of research will provide future support for situational awareness and long-term monitoring of impacts for weather and climate science.

As our Weather Impacts Industrial Placement, the key duties are:

• Expand our societal impact data collection approach by identifying and analysing appropriate data sources that are relevant to weather-induced impacts in the UK and globally.
• Refine and test the impact data collection process by evaluating the collected observations for bias and uncertainty.
• Enhance the current impact data method to be fully automated.
• Identify approaches for effective visualisation of impact observations that can support situational awareness and/or impact scenario assessment for use by forecasters and researchers.
• Engage regularly with scientists, technology experts and operational meteorologists across the Met Office to ensure the developed tool meets the needs of this diverse set of stakeholders.

Essential qualifications, skills, abilities

• You're studying for a degree with a numeracy, science (physical sciences) and/or IT element such as Computer Science or Data Science.
• You have good programming skills (particularly Python) to solve scientific and/or technical tasks.
• You keep evolving by keeping up to date with current and future IT developments and have an interest in applying new techniques to science challenges.
• You work better together by collaborating well as a member of a team, using your own initiative when required.
• You can accurately and concisely communicate the outcomes of your work through a variety of methods (oral and written).

How to apply

If you share our values, we’d love to hear from you. Please clink the link below and complete the application form, making sure to include how you meet each of the criteria above.

We are accepting applications until 29/01/2023 at 23:59 with interviews commencing between 06/03/2023 . You will hear from us once the closing date has passed. Please note we often receive a high volume of applications but we will contact everyone who applies. Our interviews are taking place remotely via Microsoft Teams.

If successful, please note we are unable to offer expenses for travel to your normal place of work. Please ask at interview if you would like extra clarity on how often this requirement is likely to be.

How we can help

If you are considering applying and need assistance to do so, please contact us via askHR@metoffice.gov.uk. You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario-based activity.

You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident (Guaranteed Interview) Scheme. To be invited to interview/assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.

We are an equal opportunities employer, welcoming applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code.

We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK - please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible. You will need to achieve full security clearance within your first 6 months with us.