Marine Support Officer
| Posting date: | 12 June 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £27,632 per year, pro rata |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 26 June 2025 |
| Location: | Peterborough, Eastern England |
| Remote working: | Hybrid - work remotely up to 1 day per week |
| Company: | JNCC Support Co |
| Job type: | Temporary |
| Job reference: | 202527 |
Summary
This is a fixed term appointment for 1 year initially.
The Marine Support Officer will work in the Marine Evidence team and also provide support to the Marine Monitoring team.
These teams cover a range of activities including organising offshore seabed surveys, improving access to and managing marine biological and protected area data, understanding human impacts on the marine environment and providing expert advice to national and international fora. The teams interact with several other JNCC marine teams and work closely with the Data and Digital Solutions team to develop and improve data products. The post holder will work with these teams to improve data access and delivery.
Post Duties
1. MPA data dissemination
• Assist with the continued development of JNCC’s MPA mapper, updating the product with new data as these become available as well as implementing improvements to the update process.
• Update the UK MPA reference datasets and publish these on the JNCC Resource Hub when changes occur to the UK MPA network.
• Assist in the development and implementation of MPA spatial data protocols to improve the flow and management of MPA GI evidence to JNCC users.
• Prepare MPA boundary data for the nomination of UK MPAs to OSPAR.
2. Benthic survey data management – Assist with the management of marine data, including:
• Data management and metadata cataloguing of incoming datasets in accordance with the benthic survey data ingestion protocol;
• Assist with the ongoing organisation of third-party data, including ascertaining usage permissions;
• Assist with the external storage and publication of survey datasets (e.g. Data Archive Centres);
• Run periodic reports to summarise UK marine data;
• Contribute to current and developing work areas on the Marine Recorder application.
3. Offshore seabed survey support – Contribute to planning of MPA monitoring surveys including:
• Assist survey planning leads in developing plans for offshore MPA monitoring surveys with partners including Cefas and Marine Directorate by preparing and managing survey data packages and creating survey maps for internal and external use;
• Coordinate use of offshore seabed survey equipment and Personal Protective Equipment across JNCC;
• Support the provision of seabed samples (e.g. taxonomic reference collections, genomic and carbon sub-samples) to museums and other partners;
• Update offshore seabed survey webpages and other communications as and when required e.g. following surveys, report publication;
• Promote JNCC’s work by publicising reports and surveys and through presence at conferences etc;
4. Answering internal and external data queries – Jointly manage the Foreign Commonwealth Office survey inbox and Offshore MPAs email inbox and handle other requests for data, responding to a variety of queries within 21 days of receipt;
5. Other support work – Contribute to other aspects of the team’s work as required and to improve the team’s flexibility and resilience. Including taking minutes and organising meetings and workshops.
Technical
To be a successful candidate you will be/have:
• A degree or equivalent qualification and/or relevant recent practical work experience that provides the knowledge and experience described below.
Experience (Responsibilities)
To be a successful candidate you will have:
• Ability to use standard office software (word, presentational software and the internet), in particular experience using spreadsheets to interrogate and manipulate data in a logical and methodical manner (preferably MS Office).
• Experience in managing and ensuring the quality assurance of large-scale datasets;
• Experience using GIS to map, manipulate and interpret datasets (preferably using ArcGIS or QGIS).
• A broad understanding of marine nature conservation work in UK, ideally in relation to work on MPAs.
Additional skills and experience that would be desirable to the post are:
• Experience using relational databases to manage and manipulate datasets (preferably using MS Access or PostgreSQL).
• Knowledge of the types of data used in marine monitoring from remote-sensing and in-situ marine sampling, including acoustic survey, remote imagery and infauna collection, as well as more novel techniques such as eDNA;
The Marine Support Officer will work in the Marine Evidence team and also provide support to the Marine Monitoring team.
These teams cover a range of activities including organising offshore seabed surveys, improving access to and managing marine biological and protected area data, understanding human impacts on the marine environment and providing expert advice to national and international fora. The teams interact with several other JNCC marine teams and work closely with the Data and Digital Solutions team to develop and improve data products. The post holder will work with these teams to improve data access and delivery.
Post Duties
1. MPA data dissemination
• Assist with the continued development of JNCC’s MPA mapper, updating the product with new data as these become available as well as implementing improvements to the update process.
• Update the UK MPA reference datasets and publish these on the JNCC Resource Hub when changes occur to the UK MPA network.
• Assist in the development and implementation of MPA spatial data protocols to improve the flow and management of MPA GI evidence to JNCC users.
• Prepare MPA boundary data for the nomination of UK MPAs to OSPAR.
2. Benthic survey data management – Assist with the management of marine data, including:
• Data management and metadata cataloguing of incoming datasets in accordance with the benthic survey data ingestion protocol;
• Assist with the ongoing organisation of third-party data, including ascertaining usage permissions;
• Assist with the external storage and publication of survey datasets (e.g. Data Archive Centres);
• Run periodic reports to summarise UK marine data;
• Contribute to current and developing work areas on the Marine Recorder application.
3. Offshore seabed survey support – Contribute to planning of MPA monitoring surveys including:
• Assist survey planning leads in developing plans for offshore MPA monitoring surveys with partners including Cefas and Marine Directorate by preparing and managing survey data packages and creating survey maps for internal and external use;
• Coordinate use of offshore seabed survey equipment and Personal Protective Equipment across JNCC;
• Support the provision of seabed samples (e.g. taxonomic reference collections, genomic and carbon sub-samples) to museums and other partners;
• Update offshore seabed survey webpages and other communications as and when required e.g. following surveys, report publication;
• Promote JNCC’s work by publicising reports and surveys and through presence at conferences etc;
4. Answering internal and external data queries – Jointly manage the Foreign Commonwealth Office survey inbox and Offshore MPAs email inbox and handle other requests for data, responding to a variety of queries within 21 days of receipt;
5. Other support work – Contribute to other aspects of the team’s work as required and to improve the team’s flexibility and resilience. Including taking minutes and organising meetings and workshops.
Technical
To be a successful candidate you will be/have:
• A degree or equivalent qualification and/or relevant recent practical work experience that provides the knowledge and experience described below.
Experience (Responsibilities)
To be a successful candidate you will have:
• Ability to use standard office software (word, presentational software and the internet), in particular experience using spreadsheets to interrogate and manipulate data in a logical and methodical manner (preferably MS Office).
• Experience in managing and ensuring the quality assurance of large-scale datasets;
• Experience using GIS to map, manipulate and interpret datasets (preferably using ArcGIS or QGIS).
• A broad understanding of marine nature conservation work in UK, ideally in relation to work on MPAs.
Additional skills and experience that would be desirable to the post are:
• Experience using relational databases to manage and manipulate datasets (preferably using MS Access or PostgreSQL).
• Knowledge of the types of data used in marine monitoring from remote-sensing and in-situ marine sampling, including acoustic survey, remote imagery and infauna collection, as well as more novel techniques such as eDNA;
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