6585 - Higher Data Scientist - Earth Observation Analyst

Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society.

Our Role

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others.

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature.

• Recovering Nature– Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives.
• Building Better Places– Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us.
• Improving Health and Wellbeing– Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live.
• Delivering Security through Nature– Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at:
Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK

The Role

This role will lead and support delivery of a range of Earth Observation (EO) projects, and the wider development of EO skills in the team and across Natural England. A wide breadth of EO work is undertaken, including drone data capture and processing, monitoring dynamic coastlines, wildfire mapping and habitat mapping. This work is undertaken using data from drone, manned aircraft and satellite platforms, from a range of different sensors such as Aerial Photography, Multispectral, LIDAR and RADAR.

We are seeking a EO analyst for this position, with significant capability in applying EO techniques. The role will support delivery of a range of EO projects, and the wider development of EO skills in the team and across Natural England. Initially the post- holder will be involved in and help lead a variety of projects to support Natural England’s objectives. These may include analysis of sand dunes and coastal habitats, monitoring geomorphological change or moorland change and developing projects with other teams on the use of drones, manned aircraft and satellites, such as for agri-environment monitoring.

The role may also encompass providing technical advice and support in relation to NE's Enforcement work, to include analysing and evaluating data and producing evidence to support enforcement appeals, enforcement notices and court cases. This could involve providing written witness statements and verbal evidence to help the court understand complex or technical issues.

Job description

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

The post holder will:
• Lead EO projects- Through reporting on project progress, helping to design projects, functionally lead work and if required oversee equipment / software resources and financial aspects.
• Contribute to EO Analysis. Develop and run EO analysis, including through data acquisition, handling, manipulation, integration, and analysis using a variety of tools including standard EO software, R and Python scripting, including AI techniques, on different platforms including cloud computing environments.
• Maintain and develop relationships with customers and partners. Engage with partners and end users to share knowledge on EO approaches and products, build partnerships on common problems and understand customer needs for EO data products/support.
• Support capability building, documentation and quality assurance. Work to help build and deliver technical skills training and create reproducible analytical pipelines and standardised products. Including through documentation of methods and quality assurance approaches.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Planning, prioritisation, and organisational ability to manage project delivery, with competing demands.
• Good experience in using Earth Observation in an environmental context.
• Ability to demonstrate good experience with a range of EO Sensors/Platforms.
• Ability to demonstrate confident use of a range of GIS and EO software.
• Experience in coding in Python and/or R.
• Preferably with experience in AI techniques like Machine Learning and/or Deep Learning with EO data.
• Ability to consider the identify the best techniques for monitoring features, through understanding the benefits and limitations to those techniques.
• Knowledge and understanding of good practices for data ethics, data governance and quality assurance.
• The ability to build collaborative relationships with colleagues to help make things happen and deliver outcomes.
• The ability to resolve problems and manage risks with good judgement and seek innovative solutions.
• Excellent written and oral communications skills.