{"id":25383,"url":"https://alion.io/job/alex-staff-agency-data-specialist","title":"Data Specialist","company":{"id":6834,"name":"Alex Staff Agency","domain":"alexstaff.agency","url":"https://alion.io/company/alex-staff-agency","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":true,"employer_type":"agency","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":47,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":63000,"max_usd":143000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":202},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"dbt","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"NumPy","optional":false},{"name":"Pandas","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Time Series","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"Slack","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-08T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T01:20:30Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":175,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":174},"description":"We need someone who understands data deeply and uses Python to wrangle it - not a platform engineer, not a pure pipeline builder, but a data specialist who's comfortable with research, investigation, and the unglamorous work of making messy energy market data actually usable.\nYou'll spend significant time on tasks like: mapping BM units to power plants and fuel types, reconciling legacy data formats with current ones, ensuring consistency between different Elexon message types, and cleaning time-series data (outliers, gaps, overlaps). Some of this requires genuine investigation - cross-referencing sources, making judgment calls, documenting edge cases. There's no API that solves these problems for you.\nPython is your primary tool (Pandas, Numpy, standard libraries) to minimise manual effort, but you should be comfortable that some detective work is unavoidable. If you find satisfaction in truly understanding a dataset's structure and quirks - rather than just piping data through and hoping for the best - this role is for you.\nData Mapping and Research\nMap BM units from Elexon to their corresponding power plants, substations, and fuel types - combining API data, public registers, and manual research\nMap substations to ETYS zones and grid supply points\nBuild and maintain reference/master datasets that link identifiers across disparate sources (Elexon, National Grid ESO, TEC register, etc.)\nDocument mappings, assumptions, and known limitations clearly for downstream users\nData Reconciliation and Consistency\nReconcile legacy data formats with current formats (e.g., historical operational data stored in different schemas or granularities)\nEnsure consistency between different Elexon message types - understand the market data structure well enough to know why BOALF, BOD, and DISBSAD might not perfectly align and how to handle it\nInvestigate discrepancies between data sources and determine authoritative values\nData Cleaning and Quality\nClean time-series data: detect outliers (price spikes, meter errors), fill gaps appropriately, resolve overlapping or duplicate timestamps\nDevelop reusable Python-based cleaning routines that can be applied across datasets\nUnderstand why data quality issues occur (settlement reruns, late submissions, format changes) not just patch them\nPipeline Development (Supporting the Above)\nWrite and maintain Python data grabbers for energy market APIs\nBuild dbt models to transform raw data into clean, analysis-ready datasets\nOrchestrate workflows via GitHub Actions\nDesign PostgreSQL schemas that reflect your understanding of the domain\nRequirements\nStrong Python skills for data work - you're fluent with pandas, comfortable writing clean, testable code, and can build reusable data processing logic. This is not an Excel role.\nSolid SQL skills - complex queries, window functions, CTEs in PostgreSQL\nExperience with messy, real-world data - you've done reconciliation, cleaning, or mapping work before and understand it's not always automatable\nMethodical and detail-oriented - you notice inconsistencies and want to understand root causes\nGood documentation habits - you know that undocumented mappings and assumptions are technical debt\nSelf-directed - you can own ambiguous problems, do your own research, and communicate findings clearly\nNice to Have\nExperience with energy, utilities, or market data (any geography)\nFamiliarity with UK energy markets, Elexon data, or grid operations\ndbt experience for transformation pipelines\nExposure to time-series data challenges (irregular timestamps, gaps, restatements)\nHighly Desirable - Agentic AI Coding Experience\nWe value candidates who can build software using agentic AI coding systems. This is fundamentally\ndifferent from using code completion tools or chat-based assistants.\nNot What We're Looking For\nPlatform/infrastructure engineers who prefer to stay above the data layer\nPeople who expect clean, well-documented data as input\nThose uncomfortable with research, ambiguity, or \"manual\" investigation work\nPracticalities\nRemote-first with async collaboration (Slack, GitHub, documented decisions)\nCore overlap with UK business hours expected (at least 4 hours daily)\nCompetitive compensation based on location and experience\nBenefits\nPlenty of opportunities for learning and professional growth\nB2b contract with a paid vacation","description_format":"text","description_chars":4346,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-05-08T00:00:00Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":7,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.238,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":174,"expected_fill_days":47,"reasons":["conf:2","agency","urgency","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/alex-staff-agency-data-specialist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/alex-staff-agency-data-specialist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T03:33:21Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4743,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":6834},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6834"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Falex-staff-agency-data-specialist"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Falex-staff-agency-data-specialist"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Falex-staff-agency-data-specialist"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/alex-staff-agency-data-specialist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Falex-staff-agency-data-specialist"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":25383}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"alexstaff.agency","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":25383},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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