Environment:

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an international organisation supported by 31 States*. Its prime objectives are the operational production of analyses, medium-range forecasts of weather and ocean waves and seasonal forecasts, as well as scientific and technical research directed to the improvement of these forecasts. ECMWF operates a large computing facility including supercomputers, data archiving systems and networks.

Main duties:
The vacancy is in the Data Acquisition and Pre-processing Group of the Meteorological Applications Sections in the Operations Department of ECMWF. This group develops applications to acquire meteorological data from the WMO Global Telecommunications System (GTS) and other data providers through dedicated telecommunication lines and the Internet, decode the data, code it into BUFR or GRIB, store data in observation databases, extract the data and present it to the analysis system.

The consultant will work on the acquisition, processing and monitoring of new and existing observational data. The main focus will be on optimising the acquisition and pre-processing chain to improve the availability of observational data for the Boundary Condition project analysis runs.

The consultant will also provide support for the EUMETNET SRNWP Interoperability project. The main task in this context will be to assist participating partners who use ECMWF’s grib_api for coding limited area boundary conditions and model output from limited area model runs in GRIB-2.

The consultant is expected to participate in the on-call support of the section.

Qualifications:

A university education or equivalent is required, together with at least two years’ experience in the development and maintenance of computer applications in C/C++ or FORTRAN in a Unix environment. Experience in the processing of meteorological data, especially in the binary WMO code formats BUFR and GRIB, would be a clear advantage.

Fluency in one of the working languages of the Centre (English, French and German) and a good knowledge of at least one of the other languages are also required.

Remuneration:

Typically within the range of £3,674.00 to £5,090.00 per month net of tax, depending upon qualifications, experience, personal situation and eligibility for expatriation allowance. A deduction of either £33.62 per beneficiary or 4.38% of the monthly remuneration will be made for the supplementary health insurance scheme.

Starting date: As soon as possible.

Length of contract: 18 months.

Applications: Application forms in word format can be downloaded from here (162kb) and completed on-line. If you download, you may (if near to the closing date) e-mail the completed form only back to ECMWF at jobs@ecmwf.int. Please note, however, that you must still send your full application form together with all the attachments to ECMWF by post. Under no circumstances should you e-mail your attachments.

Closing date: Completed applications for this post must reach the Personnel Section of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts not later than 11 May 2009.