Senior Earth Observation Specialist

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) is an executive agency of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), delivering over £2 billion in payments to farmers, traders and landowners each year.

We are an Operational Delivery Profession organisation, with the majority of our people delivering day to day services to our customers and stakeholders.

We make excellent delivery happen, empowering agricultural and rural communities to create a better place to live. We manage over 40 schemes, and also make payments on behalf of Natural England, to ensure we have a healthy rural economy, strong and sustainable rural communities, and to protect and enhance the natural environment.

Our vision is to create a great place for people living in this country. We have developed a set of four strategic objectives covering our policy outcomes and corporate objectives. These objectives help us to deliver our ambitious vision to build our green and healthy future and provide a framework for all of the important work that we carry out.

Further information can be found on the Rural Payments Agency website www.rpa.gov.uk

As a Senior Earth Observation Specialist, you will utilise a wide range of technology and data for surveillance, geo-intelligence gathering, and mapping of the natural environment and rural landscape. You will be part of the Geospatial Team within the RPA, which is responsible for overseeing and delivering various geomatics capabilities, including earth observation, the geospatial data supply chain, machine learning, spatial analytics, and the design of enterprise geospatial information products and solutions.

This outstanding opportunity is aimed at an Earth Observation Specialist with excellent technical knowledge of data science concepts and a keen interest in working in a fast-paced, dynamic, and motivated team environment. Successful applicants will have the unique chance to work, develop, and grow their skills within a geo-centric organisation.

You will be involved in an exciting and expanding business area, where you will further develop and exploit data from airborne platforms and remote sensing satellites. This is an excellent opportunity to contribute to strategic environmental programmes and business-critical initiatives within central government.

Our team has already embedded remote sensing and machine learning capabilities into operational business processes. Working with the existing team, you will help to develop and exploit these capabilities within enterprise-scale business processes. You will gain experience working with various teams across the agency and wider government, delivering projects, engaging with our supply chain, and contributing to a fast-growing business area.

Earth observation is a key growth area for the RPA. By creating deep learning algorithms, you will train models to produce markers that capture key options and actions in our schemes, identifying objects and events such as bare soil, mowing, and harvesting, and meeting our regulatory obligations for hedgerows.

With access to high-resolution, high-frequency interpolated satellite imagery and aerial photography, you will develop these markers and apply them at scale across England. These capabilities are transforming how our field teams work with customers, helping them maximise the benefits of their agreements.

Looking ahead, you will lead innovation in platforming our land data and intelligence, integrating these with the appropriate systems within the RPA and across wider government departments, with a focus on driving environmental recovery as well as food and biosecurity.

We are also working to develop new markers to broaden the scope of remote monitoring for schemes, which will be crucial to delivering a widescale monitoring capability across England, helping to determine strategic outcomes and guide policy direction.