Summary of the role

The C3S aims to provide European stakeholders, including public authorities, businesses and citizens, with access to authoritative information about climate change and its impact on society. The C3S infrastructure will consist of a distributed Climate Data Store (CDS), a toolbox to enable computations of the CDS contents, a centralised catalogue that will describe the holdings of the CDS, and a web portal. The portal will allow users to discover and interact with the content of the CDS by browsing and searching the catalogue, submit data requests and perform computations on these data.

ECMWF will be responsible for the operation of the C3S service. It is envisaged that some components of the C3S will run at ECMWF, for instance the web portal, while other components will be distributed, such as the provision of large datasets hosted at remote sites. ECMWF will also act as a data provider, making available some datasets like reanalyses or seasonal predictions through the CDS.

ECMWF will issue an invitation to tender for the software development and implementation of the C3S infrastructure.

The post will be key to the implementation and operational production of all the components of the C3S infrastructure. The successful candidate will be involved in the development and integration of the C3S infrastructure, working closely with the contractor(s) and ensuring that all components are fit for production. This includes the role of ECMWF as a data provider.

Main duties and key responsibilities

The successful candidate will be part of a small cross-group, multi-functional team, together with developers and system administrators. He or she will provide support for the integration of the C3S components into ECMWF’s operational infrastructure, as well as the connection of ECMWF’s archives with the CDS.

During the development phase, the successful candidate will work closely with the stakeholders, including contractor(s), to ensure the technological choices are sound and the system meets the requirements. This will be followed by a pre-operational acceptance phase prior to the operational deployment of the service.

Key responsibilities:

• Working closely with the stakeholders, including contractor(s), to design and develop the C3S infrastructure, until the service enters the operational phase.
• Data Governance for the content of the Climate Data Store
• Operation of the C3S service, including monitoring, on-call support, reporting and planning for its evolution.

For more information and to submit an application, please click the "Apply through website" button and select Vacancy Number VN15-31.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to communicate with scientists, engineers and other professional staff in an international environment to understand complex requirements
• Ability to work with internal and external partners
• Flexibility, with the ability to adapt to changing organisational priorities and user needs
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills with a proactive approach
• A university degree or equivalent in a discipline related to computer science, meteorology or engineering.
• At least three years of experience managing large datasets in an operational environment.
• Experience in managing technical projects.
• Programming with scripting languages such as Shell and Python on UNIX systems.
• Knowledge of data format standards used in climatology or meteorology, such as GRIB, BUFR or CF/NetCDF, would be advantageous.
• Experience with building and managing catalogues using metadata standards, such as the ISO 19000 series or INSPIRE, would be advantageous.
• Solid knowledge of web services, in particular, experience with services using standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services would be a clear advantage.
• Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and interviews will be conducted in English.
• A good knowledge of one of the Centre’s other working languages (French or German) would be an advantage.

ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing and disseminating numerical weather predictions to its Member States. ECMWF carries out scientific and technical research directed to the improvement of its forecasts, collects and processes large amounts of observations, and manages a long-term archive of meteorological data. Satellite and in situ observations provide the information for up-to-date global analyses and climate reanalyses of the atmosphere, ocean and land surface.

For details, see www.ecmwf.int/.

ECMWF has been entrusted to operate the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on behalf of the European Commission until the end of 2020. Copernicus is the European Union (EU) flagship Earth-observation programme. The programme ensures operational monitoring of the atmosphere, oceans, and continental surfaces, and will provide reliable, validated information services for a range of environmental and security applications.