Data Scientist: Linked Open Data and Marine

The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) is a member of the Helmholtz Association (HGF) and funded by federal and state government. AWI focuses on polar and marine research in a variety of disciplines such as biology, oceanography, geology, geochemistry and geophysics thus allowing multidisciplinary approaches to scientific goals.
- Data Scientist: Linked Open Data and Marine Biodiversity (M/F/d)

**Background**
The incumbent will work on three closely interrelated projects - MARine COastal BiOdiversity Long-term Observations (MARCO-BOLO), BiOceanS5D, and Global cooperation on FAIR data policy and practice (WorldFAIR) - with the overall objective to harmonise data and information flows within the digital framework of the UN Ocean Decade and the IODE of IOC-UNESCO.

**Tasks**
The incumbent will pursue and publish (in peer-reviewed journals) data science research focused on the increasingly more interlinked, web-actionable, and transparent ocean digital ecosystem that all the noted projects and initiatives contribute to.

The research tasks will transfer the skills from ecological sciences to digital ecosystems, evaluating their (cyber)diversity, structure, and function in order to create a scientific basis for objectively characterising the state of the ocean’s digital ecosystem.

The results of this work will be used as a basis for further strategy development and implementation guidance, to engineer more robust and interoperable ocean digital ecosystems.

**Requirements**:

- PhD or equivalent experience in data science and/or informatics
- High fluency in core data science skills including:

- Data management, storage (e.g. in SQL relational databases, Triplestores, etc), harmonisation, and standardisation
- Programmatic data (re)formatting - experience working with structured data on the web (e.g. JSON-LD, RDF)
- Access, use, and transformation of linked open data via, e.g., APIs, embedded (meta)data
- Developing web-based data exchanges across distributed systems
- Basic data analytics using statistical computing languages or packages (e.g. R, python)
- Ability to work with stakeholders from different disciplines and domains (academia, industry, policy, etc)
- Ability to represent AWI at project consortium meetings and international fora
- Ability to perform independent research within the frameworks of the deliverables
- Ability to assess and suggest optimisations for digital practices across diverse consortia
- Ability to develop, lead, and/or teach in training courses and capacity development processes including supervision/training of junior staff and collaborators
- Ability to work across distributed hardware including remote storage and computing systems
- Ability to lead or contribute to peer-reviewed publications
- Ability to contribute to and support supervisors in project reporting, including (co-)authoring project reports, deliverables, and - when needed - representing supervisors in official project meetings.
- Familiarity with UNIX / Linux based systems
- Excellent command of English.

**Desirable skills and knowledge**:

- Familiarity with biology, biodiversity, and/or ecological data and theory
- Fluency in metadata handling relevant to biodiversity / omic data and information products
- Experience with knowledge representation (KR) technologies and ontology development
- Experience using cloud-based systems

**Further Information**

This is a full-time position, limited to 18 months. It is also suitable for part-time employment. The salary will be paid in accordance with the Collective Agreement for the Public Service of the Federation (Tarifvertrag des öffentlichen Dienstes, TVöD Bund), up to salary level **13**. The place of employment will be **Bremerhaven**.**

Postdocs have to register with AWI's postdoc office **PROCEED**, thereby gaining access to a set of tailor-made career development tools.

**The AWI is characterized by**
- our scientific success - excellent research
- collaboration and cooperation - intra-institute, national and international, interdisciplinary
- opportunities to develop - on the job and towards other positions
- an international environment - everyday contact with people from all over the world
- flexible working hours and the possibility of mobile working up to 50% of regular working hours
- health promotion and company fitness with EGYM Wellpass
- support services and a culture of reconciling work and family
- occupational pension provision (VBL)

Equal opportunities are an integral part of our personnel policy. The AWI aims to increase the number of employees who are women, and therefore, strongly encourages qualified women to apply.

Applicants with disabilities will be given preference when equal qualifications are present.
The AWI fosters the compatibility of work and family in various ways and has received a number of awards as a result of this engagement.

Reference number: 24/40/D/Bio-b