About the job

Summary

We are recruiting highly skilled professionals for the newly established National Situation Centre (SitCen) in the Cabinet Office. This new centre brings timely data, analysis and insights from across and beyond government to support situational awareness on crisis and national security issues.

The newly formed team has the opportunity to shape and develop SitCen’s capabilities, approach and culture, helping to lead the ongoing design and implementation of this important new capability for the UK.

The SitCen brings together a unique set of skilled people, capabilities and experience from across government, operating 24/7 and extended hours to support horizon scanning and crisis-response across the full range of national risks, from civil emergencies to national security issues.

We work with partners across and beyond government to innovate and experiment with new technology and analytical techniques at the sharpest end of Government’s crisis response, supporting our leaders in decision-making. We integrate brilliant minds, innovative technology, incredible teamwork and collaboration to make the UK safer, and help bring the absolute best of Government to the toughest crisis challenges that our nation faces. We pride ourselves on our team culture, which is operationally and customer focussed, innovative, compassionate and inclusive, and continuously learning.

The SitCen forms part of the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat, sitting alongside COBR facilities, as a key part of Government’s crisis response infrastructure.

The SitCen is not an operations centre, or a replacement for departmental facilities. SitCen’s objectives are to improve data and insights for situational awareness of potential and emerging crises, visualising data in ways that help senior decision makers navigate a complex data landscape, and shortening development times to produce insights into unpredicted crises and events.

The service it provides and approaches it uses will continuously develop as technology, government data holdings and connectivity improve.

Job description

We are seeking skilled individuals with relevant technical skills, and welcome applicants from data engineering, devops, analytical, or data science backgrounds.

You will be keen to learn cutting-edge skills at the intersection of data engineering, software development, analysis and data science.

You want to improve your data skills to become a better data engineer.

You will be part of the SitCen Technology team with a key focus on building Data pipelines for the ingestion and transformation of data from across government.

Communication skills (data):

You know how to support communication to and between technical and non-technical stakeholders as well as support and facilitate discussions within a multidisciplinary team in a complex environment. You will need to be comfortable with communicating and negotiating new ideas and different perspectives.

Data development process:

You can design, build and test data products that are complex or large-scale. You know how to support in building teams to provide data integration services. You have experience of working with AWS Cloud Data Engineering technologies. You have an understanding of how to manage data sharing in a secure and compliant manner, balancing the right levels of access against any sensitivities.

Problem resolution (data):

You know how to respond to problems in databases, data processes, data products and services as they occur. You can initiate actions, monitor services and identify trends to resolve problems. You can determine the appropriate remedy and assist with implementation of it as well as preventative measures.

Programming and build (data engineering):

You have experience of working with modern software development techniques such as: DevOps; Git-ops; continuous testing, development and integration; configuration as code; and infrastructure as code.

You will be using and developing Data Engineering capability provided within the AWS environment.

You will deliver capability using an appropriate structured process. Agile and DevOps experience would be an advantage.

Responsibilities

Person Specification

You will be an experienced Data Engineer with the following technical skills:

• Strong AWS experience (ideally including Lambda, Glue, Redshift, Sagemaker, IAM, Athena, EC2, Kinesis, Cloudwatch, Cloudtrail)

• Python

• SQL

• DevOps background with good knowledge of cloud based IAC technologies. Terraform or serverless

• Git as version control

• Familiar with CI/CD

• Any exposure to Machine Learning is a bonus

It would be helpful if applicants held a minimum of SC clearance, or DV. All applicants will need to be willing to undertake Developed Vetting (DV) in order to be successful in their application.

The nature of this post may occasionally require you to respond to unexpected events/crisis. At such times you will be required to work outside of your conditioned hours at short notice. This could be on any day including weekends.

During a national crisis that requires COBR level meetings, it may be necessary for the successful candidate to move to working a shift pattern in partnership with colleagues. This would be covered by Cabinet Office shift allowances.

Whilst the SitCen will be required to operate 24/7, we aspire to find ways of operating that will enable recruitment from a diverse talent pool. It is our intent to develop a network of surge pools from across government that will enable round the clock working where necessary, whilst placing a premium on staff wellbeing.

Whilst there may be a requirement for working unusual hours at times, we would welcome a discussion about how you might be successful in the role. Applications from staff working part-time, full-time, compressed hours or job-share are welcome.

There are a range of ways in which this job could be done depending on the quantity of hours worked. The responsibilities could be split (or reduced) as part of a job share or part time working pattern, and there are some elements of the job that may be suitable for home working on an occasional basis. If you are a person with disabilities, and something in this job advert worries you, come and talk to us about your strengths and how we might tailor the job to be flexible and inclusive of your needs.