Applied Research Ref. 494

GCHQ is one of the UK’s three intelligence agencies, providing signals intelligence and cyber defence. As the world moves into a digital age, the UK faces unprecedented technological threats and opportunities. The role of Applied Research (AR) in GCHQ is to advance the art of possible: through our combination of deep research skills and technological ingenuity, we recognise and counter the threats and capitalise on the opportunities.

AR is an exciting and unique place to work:

•    You will conduct unique research, and apply it, to deliver real benefit to GCHQ.
•    You will work with, and develop, cutting edge technology.
•    You will solve problems and create prototypes that can directly benefit the security of the UK.
•    You will work in the unique environment offered by secret intelligence; occasionally you will bring your research to bear on current operations.
•    We will help you become an expert within a community of highly motivated and skilled research groups.

GCHQ as an employer offers excellent opportunities for training and professionalization. You will be eligible to join our accredited professionalization scheme, and we will pay you to achieve charted status, or gain membership, with a professional body.

Are you a Computer Scientist or Electronic Engineer?

No?  

Don’t worry – we seek a diverse profile of numerate and scientific researchers, who are strongly motivated to learn the skills they need to deliver in a technology organisation.

Yes?  

Technology is at the heart of our mission, from far out forward thinking research to robust, unbreakable engineered solutions. We are looking for innovative individuals who have the desire to go down into the depths of the technology and push the limits of the possible. For example, you might want to achieve the highest performance, analyse a range of technologies to identify the best for a particular application, or fully understand a system's edge and corner cases. We're interested in a wide range of technologies, and it would be desirable for you to have experience with, or share an interest in, some of the same areas. These interests include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Alternate compute platforms (e.g. FPGA, GPGPU, Xeon-PHI)
* Embedded systems (e.g. ARM, MIPS)
* Low-level programming (e.g. Device drivers, kernel modules)
* Multi-threaded software
* Real-time stream processing
* High-performance software
* Heterogeneous computing (e.g. OpenCL)
* Interface understanding (e.g. Ethernet, PCIe, RAM)
 
Whatever the problem, we'll expect you to use the most appropriate technologies, languages and processes to solve it, so you'll need to be comfortable learning new skills and keeping yourself up to date.

Requirements

Essential Qualifications

You must have:

A Level or equivalent at Grade B or above in Mathematics (or Further, Pure, Advanced, Applied Maths or Statistics)

A Level or equivalent at Grade B or above in another STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering) subject

A Level or equivalent at Grade B or above in any other subject (this does not include General Studies)

You must have, or expect to achieve, by summer 2016:

A minimum 2:1 Honours degree in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or another numerate and scientific degree.

Essential Experience

You should be able to demonstrate:

•    Strong problem solving/algorithm development through (perhaps limited) programming
•    Examples of where you have innovated, and demonstrated drive to deliver results
•    Strong ability and appetite to learn quickly
•    Effective oral & written communication
 
Responsibilities

AR has a number of research themes, each with typical techniques and technologies. You do not necessarily need to have experience of the techniques listed below to apply, but you will need a desire to learn and work with us to become an expert.
 

Deep Technology – Firmware design, OS/Kernel programming, bespoke processors, systems architecture.
 
Data Access – Real-Time algorithms, stream processing and large-scale systems.

Data Science – Machine learning, distributed data analysis, information fusion, cluster technologies.

Media and Language – Speech recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence.
 
Networks – Networking, autonomous signalling systems, deep telecoms knowledge.

Security – Novel approaches to security and vulnerabilities research, malware analysis.
 
Other – things we simply cannot tell anyone about until they join us...

Selection Process

As part of this campaign you will be required to undergo:

Minimum Eligibility Sift – Technical Sift – On-Line Test – Assessment Centre (Interview, group and written exercises)

Dates to Remember

Closing date for applications is     Monday 23rd November 2015 @ 23:00

On-line Tests                 23rd – 27th November 2015

Assessment Centre             Week Commencing 1st February 2016
 

The Reward Package

The starting salary for a graduate position is currently £27,913. A recruitment bonus of £2,000 is also applicable, of which half will be paid in your first months’ salary and the remaining amount will be paid on successful completion of your probation.

A limited number of roles/packages for experienced applicants (graduate and 2+years in relevant employment) may be available. These are dependant of specific experience/skills and vacancies in AR.