Data Scientist Summer Placement
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
This placement will be working within a long-term collaboration between the Hartree Centre and an international research partner in the field of astronomy. You will work alongside your colleagues, and our collaborators, to implement data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions to monitor operations at a leading international astronomical observatory. There will be scope for you to be able to take ownership of one of several identified potential sub-projects. You will regularly interact with our other technical teams, including AI and Software Engineering, providing you with a fantastic opportunity to understand how real-world solutions are developed and delivered across the Hartree Centre.
What You'll Learn
- Data Science Context: Relationship with computer science, statistics, and software engineering; impact of different schools of thought.
- Governance & Ethics: Data security, bias, fairness, compliance, and international regulations.
- Data Systems: Processing and storage (on-premise vs cloud), database types (relational, NoSQL, real-time).
- Modelling, event detection, predictive analytics, machine learning, AI, NLP, computer vision.
- Development Standards: Programming practices, testing, source control.
- Data Landscape: Sources (files, systems, APIs, social media), formats (structured/unstructured), patterns in real-world data.
- Problem Reformulation: Translate organisational challenges into Data Science problems.
- Data Engineering: Source, pipeline, transform, and store data.
- Programming & Analysis: Use appropriate languages/tools for manipulation, visualisation, and integration.
- Model Building: Statistical analysis, feature engineering, machine learning, optimisation.
- Solution Implementation: Evaluate architectures, deployment options, ROI, and scalability.
Summer Placements at STFC
STFC's incredibly diverse range of placements allow you to work alongside world leading engineers, scientists, and technicians in highly collaborative environments. Whichever you choose, you will become a critical member of the team in which you will be exposed to exciting projects and challenges from the start. You will also be supported every step of the way by our dedicated Early Careers Development Team
Key Duties & Responsibilities
Within this placement, responsibilities will include some of the following:
- Work on building solutions to customers' data science challenges.
- Learn and apply data-centric analytics and AI technologies.
- Regular collaboration with academic partners, validating conclusions and presenting results to customers, including using advanced visualisation.
- Publish non-confidential results to build the Hartree Centre and your own profiles in the community
Requirements
Do you have experience in Python?, * You are in full time education at university, and will be returning to university/your studies to complete your undergraduate degree once the summer placement has concluded (S)
- You have the right to live and work in the UK for the duration of the placement (S)
- A strong interest in Data Science, technology and computing (S&I)
- Undertaking a STEM degree with a significant statistical or mathematical component
- Ability to work as part of a team and independently (S&I)
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including focus and quality of cover letter (S&I)
- Confident with strong attention to detail and able to prioritise tasks effectively (S&I)
- Self-motivated with the ability to take initiative to solve problems (I)
Desirable:
- Programming experience with at least one language, e.g. Python (S&I)
- Basic knowledge of data science and visualisation libraries such as Pandas, Seaborn, Matplotlib and others (S&I)
- Knowledge of basic concepts in statistics (e.g. mean, variance, probability) (S&I)
Benefits & conditions
We are offering a fixed term position with a whole host of benefits including:
- 30 days holiday pro rata
- Flexible working hours.
- Easily accessible public transport links/ free parking.
- Excellent learning and development opportunities.