Lead Field Technician

Permanent and Full Time (37 hours per week)

Preferred Location: Wallingford, some hybrid working will be possible with this role.

Alternative location: Lancaster. This would require regular visits to Wallingford to support team training needs and project delivery (reducing to approximately 3 days every eight weeks after initial training and settling in).

Closing Date: Friday, 6th January 2023

Interviews: Will be held in person and in Wallingford, soon after this date.

We have a fantastic opportunity for a Lead Field Technician who can be based at either Wallingford or our Lancaster site. We'll provide the workshop, tools, PPE, vehicles, and ongoing development. Can you bring consistency, creativity, and innovative engineering solutions to support excellent environmental science with impact? 

You will be joining a dynamic and multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers. Your work will play a key part in supporting a flagship soil moisture monitoring project. You will be responsible for translating scientific monitoring requirements into reliable, low-maintenance automated sensor networks. 

Key responsibilities are to configure, construct, install and maintain field instrumentation and data logging systems. Mentoring junior engineers, supporting their training and development. The post will support a full range of automatic sampling, weather stations and advanced soil moisture monitoring systems for the COSMOS-UK Project. (http://cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/). 

Main Responsibilities 

• Lead responsive and planned maintenance for automated field instrument systems (data loggers, sensors, telemetry, and data collection server) 
• Train and mentor technicians within the team 
• Work collaboratively with lead scientists, to develop new environmental monitoring sensor systems 
• Visit nationwide field sites for new system installations and training, fault resolution and decommissioning (averaging at around 20 field site visits per annum, some requiring overnight stays) 
• Construct, wire, program, test and deploy new systems
• Procurement - of parts and ready-made systems
• Improve data capture and data quality performance, reducing operational costs and minimising data gaps
• Keep up with available/emerging innovative technology and best practice for sensor networks
• Maintain and write thorough documentation of working procedures, calibrations, inventory etc. 

For full details, benefits of working for UKCEH and the selection criteria for this vacancy, click the apply link at the top of the advert.

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