Are you our new Data Scientist for Urban
Modelling?
The Basics
Location:
Central London
Responsible to:
Lead Data Scientist
Working Hours:
Full time. The pattern of hours may vary according to
operational needs and generally work will be carried
out during normal office hours. We’re a flexible
employer.
Contract:
This is a fixed term 2- year contract with the possibility
of being extended. The period of notice is 3 months in
writing on each side. There is a probationary period of
three months.
Holiday:
25 days per annum, plus statutory holidays.
Equal Opportunities:
The FCC strives to be an equal opportunities employer
and commitment to this process will be expected.
Who are we?
We are Future Cities Catapult. We accelerate urban ideas to market, to grow the economy
and make cities better. We bring together businesses, universities and city leaders so that
they can work with each other to solve the problems that cities face, now and in the future.
From our Urban Innovation Centre in London, we provide world-class facilities and expertise
to support the development of new products and services, as well as opportunities to
collaborate with others, test ideas and develop business models.
We help innovators turn ingenious ideas into working prototypes that can be tested in real
urban settings. Then, once they're proven, we help spread them to cities across the world to
improve quality of life, strengthen economies and protect the environment.
So what’s it about?
We are looking to hire an Urban Modelling Specialist to join our Data Science team within
the City Lab. You will join us to augment our team with urban system modelling capabilities.
Working in a multi-disciplinary Lab with scientists, engineers, service designers, insight
specialists and developers, you will work primarily on our projects focusing on integrated
urban modelling, taking them from research concepts to operational prototypes, with the
ultimate aim of supporting the Catapult’s goals of commercialising them.
You will be part of a core project team consisting of two data scientists, a software engineer
and project manager, pulling in capabilities as required from the rest of the Lab, as well as
working with our core partner, a London-based urban planning and modelling agency.
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What will you be doing?
As part of an organisation with a variety of research and development projects in the pipeline,
you will be comfortable working on a wide range of technical, analytical and communication
based tasks, contributing your skills across our teams.
You will be part of the team that will deliver an Open Source software platform to support
more effective integration of urban systems models. This will be developed in coordination
with the authorities of three UK cities and one international city. This will require you to be
comfortable with the theoretical underpinnings of multiple paradigms and applications of
analytical and algorithmic models in order to architect and build a robust and extensible
system to handle current and future modelling needs.
Main Responsibilities:
•
Map out the current landscape of state-of-the-art modelling techniques relevant to
urban systems, in terms of paradigm and domain of application
•
Design processes to abstract concept models from pre-existing modelling work to
support multi-model integration
•
Design and support the implementation of a software platform for unifying data from
various domains, and building the transformation layers to do this automatically
•
Work with the core team to iterate over the specification and implementation of the
integration platform in light of insight from user testing.
•
Liaise with domain specialists in academia and industry to pull in expertise on
specific modelling projects to support their integration into our platform
What are the priority first year outcomes?
Outcomes are what you need to accomplish in your role and are always useful to know these
before you start. These are not all the outcomes you will be expected to achieve, but some of
the primary ones are below:
•
Within 3 months: Generate an in-depth review of the current state-of-the-art of
urban modelling in use in cities today
•
Within 3 months: Work with our insights team to workshop modelling related
problems with a number of UK cities, and translate their requirements into
appropriate combinations of pre-existing models
•
Within 6 months: Design the architecture for an integrated system-of-systems
platform based around the prototypes built with our set of UK cities
•
Within 12 months: Lead the work on the intellectual underpinnings of the integration
platform, and translate this into its implementation
•
(As part of the wider team) Within 2 years: Successfully deliver a functional, robust
and extendable open source platform for integrating urban models for a range of
urban end users.
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What kind of person are we looking for?
We’re looking for an individual who is passionate about applying rigorous scientific processes
to real urban engineering challenges. You will be comfortable working in-depth and focussed
on larger, long-term research projects, as well as able to respond quickly to development
project based demands, as appropriate. You will have a solid background in analytical and
algorithm modelling as well as their application outside of the lab.
Essential requirements:
•
PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics or something equivalently
numerate. Under exceptional circumstances strong Master’s degree with additional
relevant workplace experience would also be considered.
•
Significant knowledge in the fundamentals of system dynamics, agent based
modelling, discrete event and continuous simulation, and spatial network analysis
•
Significant experience applying systems modelling to real life and ideally commercial
and urban applications
•
Experience in writing code for research purposes in languages like C++, R, Java,
Matlab, Python etc.
•
Experience in leading research work, both individually and as part of a team of fellow
scientists and engineers
Desirable requirements:
•
Experience of working with Agile development teams
•
Previous experience with linked data and/or semantic web technologies.
•
Experience with ontology engineering
•
Experience in industrial software engineering
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What about our culture?
We are a rapidly growing organisation with a mission to make urban innovation happen.
We are all deeply committed to our mission, and you will need to share that
commitment. And you will have to be happy working in a fast-moving, unstructured and
cross-disciplinary environment.
Things change as we learn, and you’ll need a degree of adaptability. Our culture is open,
collaborative and relatively non-hierarchical. We’ve tried to capture our way of working in
three principles:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
Break new ground – we’re transformative, imaginative and intelligent
Play nicely – we’re collaborative, approachable and fair
Make it a reality – we’re down to earth, tangible and we get stuck in.
You’ll thrive in an environment that sits between public and private, between cities and
tech, between art and science, between research and practice. If you are excited by the
possibility of working in one of the world’s leading urban innovation centres, a place
stuffed with a diverse group of talents and perspectives, we would encourage you to send
your application.
Want to apply?
Send your CV with covering letter via our application portal. In your cover letter tell us
why you’re right for the job.
www.futurecities.catapult.org.uk
Twitter: @FutureCitiesCat
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