Senior Technologist

National Physical Laboratory (NPL); Teddington; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

National Physical Laboratory (NPL) seeks a Senior Technologist to balance hands-on build work with design review and documentation, guiding secure and sustainable architectures aligned to organisational goals. You’ll work with a Lead Technologist to implement changes across scientific services and projects.

You will contribute to architecture decisions, ensure secure by design practices, and mentor junior engineers while maintaining clear communications with stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Strong analytical skills and practical engineering judgement.
• Experience delivering IT solutions across scientific services and platforms.
• Ability to design and implement secure, sustainable architectures.

Responsibilities

• Deliver high-quality IT changes across scientific services and environments.
• Design, build and improve solutions using modern engineering practices (version control, automated testing, CI/CD, IaC).
• Contribute to code reviews, technical discovery and proofs-of-concepts.
• Support and improve live services including incident response and problem management.
• Produce and maintain clear technical designs and documentation for handover and knowledge sharing.
• Apply secure-by-design principles to ensure interoperable solutions.
• Identify technical debt and opportunities for incremental improvements.
• Research and evaluate cutting-edge IT hardware and software for scientists and engineers.
• Support technical assurance activities with evidence and recommendations.
• Align work with Teknical Delivery Authority standards and respond to actions.
• Proactively identify and manage technology risks and communicate with stakeholders.
• Collaborate with product, delivery, operations, science and business teams.
• Support suppliers and partners with clear technical requirements.
• Develop, mentor and share knowledge with junior team members.
• Respect health & safety duties and follow safety instructions.

Skills

Analytical skills

Engineering judgement

Technical delivery

Security thinking

Education

IT-related field

Tools

Version control

CI/CD

Architecture design

Job description

A senior technologist provides strong analytical skills, technical delivery capability and practical engineering judgement, working with the Lead Technologist to implement architectures that are secure, sustainable and aligned to organisational goals. This role balances hands‑on build work with design review, technical documentation, operational support and continuous improvement among scientific and business projects alike.

About the Role

A senior technologist provides strong analytical skills, technical delivery capability and practical engineering judgement, working with the Lead Technologist to implement architectures that are secure, sustainable and aligned to organisational goals. This role balances hands‑on build work with design review, technical documentation, operational support and continuous improvement among scientific and business projects alike.

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver high-quality technology changes and IT solutions across one or more scientific services, platforms and scientific project environments, working in multidisciplinary teams
• Design, build and improve solutions using modern engineering practices (version control, automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure/configuration as code where appropriate)
• Contribute to code reviews, technical discovery, technical spikes and proof-of-concepts, helping teams make pragmatic trade-offs between speed, cost, risk and quality
• Support and improve live services, including participating in incident response and problem management, improving observability, resilience and runbooks
• Produce and maintain clear technical designs, diagrams, and documentation that can be understood, supported, and maintained by others aligned with the Lead Technologist’s direction and NPL’s architecture standards to enable handover and knowledge sharing
• Apply secure by design principles to ensure solutions are supportable, interoperable and compliant with relevant policies and controls
• Identify technical debt, single points of failure and opportunities for incremental improvements, contributing to prioritisation with product/delivery colleagues
• Research and evaluate cutting-edge IT hardware and software to support our back catalog of solution options for enabling our scientists and engineers
• Support technical assurance activities by preparing evidence, options and recommendations for design/architecture review
• Contribute to the Technical Delivery Authority (TDA) process by aligning work with agreed standards and responding to actions and recommendations
• Proactively identify and manage technology risks (security, resilience, supplier lock-in and sustainability) and elevate where appropriate
• Work closely with product, delivery, operations, scientific, and business stakeholders to understand outcomes and constraints, and communicate technical choices clearly
• Support suppliers and partners by providing clear technical requirements, reviewing deliverables and helping ensure effective knowledge transfer to NPL
• Develop, mentor, and share knowledge with more junior members of the team
• Responsible for taking reasonable duty of care for Health & Safety of themselves and of other persons who may be affected by their acts or omissions at work and always follow direct instructions given with regards to Health & Safety.

About You

Are you passionate about IT, science, technology and engineering?

Do you enjoy building and learning about systems, even outside of work (like homelabbing)?

Got a background in an IT related field (including software)?

Do you have a curious mind?

Do you want to build and maintain IT Lego and get paid to do it?

This may be the role for you!

NPL is looking to build a team to support our scientific projects with their IT system needs. On a daily basis, you’ll be working as part of a team of similar minded and capable IT professionals to apply your existing software, hardware, networking and security skills to design, build and maintain IT solutions to meet user needs in a science heavy environment, and blueprint what you build so it can be reused for other systems.

This is a hands‑on role suited towards someone with a passion for IT, wherein you will be expected to make technical decisions, implement them and own the outcomes, always seeking to improve. We are looking for someone who can both deliver and design solutions that can be understood, supported and maintained by others in the wider IT team.

This is not a role for someone who simply implements predefined textbook solutions. You will be expected to understand scientific requirements, translate them into robust technical designs with a focus on user needs, and make engineering decisions with a high degree of autonomy. You should be comfortable operating across both hands‑on delivery and solution architecture.

The solutions you design and build will be provided as services by the wider IT team to our internal customers, and we expect them to be run with formality, expectation, reliability, predictability and maintainability. To do this, you must have a solid grasp of customer requirements, technical judgement and excellent communication skills with the customer and the wider IT team.

Skills And Knowledge

You will be working with a lot of software and hardware in the