Job Opportunity: Environmental Data Service Head – Integration and Engagement

Location: National Centre for Atmospheric Science HQ, based at University of Leeds (with scope for hybrid working)
Salary: £58,596 to £67,757 per annum (depending on experience)
Contract length: Fixed term (4 years to complete specific time limited work)
Contract type: Full time
Closing date: Midnight on Monday 13 January 2025
Interview date: Thursday 30 January 2025

Are you an inspirational leader with highly developed strategic insight into current and future technical and user-focused requirements for environmental data services? Do you have extensive experience of developing and enhancing user engagement in a data service setting? Would you like to play a central role in the delivery of increasingly integrated services across the full breadth of environmental science to meet the environmental data needs of stakeholders and users across the UK and beyond? If so, we want to hear from you!

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Environmental Data Service (EDS) provides integrated data services across the breadth of NERC’s data holdings and coordinates closer collaboration and development between NERC’s five environmental data centres.

Data is central to modern understanding of our environment. Environmental science is underpinned by access to high quality sources of data and data services. As the principal funder of environmental science in the UK, NERC has supported comprehensive data services and policies since its creation over 50 years ago. Today NERC has five Environmental Data Centres embedded within its Research Centres:

Each of the five environmental data centres specialises in data within a particular sub-discipline of environmental science and serves not only NERC’s science community but also a much broader community of users and stakeholders, which span research, industry, education, government and voluntary organisations. At the same time, science and its applications are becoming increasingly multi-disciplinary. Often users of NERC data will need to access the services provided by multiple data centres.

In order to serve an ever-growing community of data users and stakeholders, in 2018 NERC created its Environmental Data Service to coordinate across the data centres. During its first five years the EDS has provided growing coordination between NERC’s data centres, both for user services and the development of new, discipline-independent services.

NERC has recently recommissioned its data services for the period 2023-2028. As a consequence, the EDS is embarking on an ambitious plan to deliver increasingly integrated services across the full breadth of NERC science and meeting the environmental data needs of stakeholders and users across the UK and beyond.

As part of this development, the EDS wishes to recruit an inspirational leader who will help to drive increasing integration between the five data centres and deepen its engagement with environmental data users and providers.

Please note, the University of Leeds will be closed from the 20th of December till the 2nd of January 2025. Any queries received during this period will be answered from Thursday 2 January 2025.