Work experience at the Met Office
Work experience at the Met Office
The Met Office work experience programme consists of two distinct phases. The first is an online work experience. This stand-alone programme is available to all UK-based students aged between 13 and 18, and all who register are guaranteed a place. As part of this programme, you’ll explore typical roles in the Met Office through a series of videos, projects and webinars and learn all about the common skills and qualifications needed to pursue a range of careers, from Forecasting, Engineering and Data Science to Cyber Security, and Customer & Stakeholder Management. Following completion of the online programme, you can apply for a second phase of work experience - a two to three day in-person placement, for which limited places are available.
We’ve teamed up with Springpod, a specialist careers platform, to offer a fascinating insight into the work of the Met Office. This online work experience is designed to develop your knowledge and skills and provides the opportunity for you to tap into individualised support from Met Office staff across the organisation via an online chat system. The online programme can be completed across a work experience week or at any other time of the year, with the bulk of your time spent on exciting work-related projects. Once you’ve finished the programme, if you’d like to find out more about a career at the Met Office, we encourage you to apply for our in-person work experience programme.
Ready to get started?
Find out more about the ‘Forecasting your Future’ online work experience programme by visiting the Springpod website, reading more about the programme and creating an account. Use the link below, click on the ‘Start’ button and follow the registration instructions.
In-person placement opportunities are available across the year, with a variety of teams, including Forecasting, Technology, Engineering and Communications.
Am I eligible to apply?
To apply for in-person work experience, you must have completed 'Forecasting Your Future', the Met Office online work experience programme. You'll also be in one of the following academic year groups at the time of the placement:
England and Wales. Years 10, 11, 12 or 13 (up to 31st August)
Northern Ireland. Years 11, 12, 13 or 14 (up to 31st August)
Scotland. S3, S4, S5 or S6 (up to 31st August)
Finally, you must be studying in the UK, either in formal education or being home-schooled.
The application procedure for an in-person placement is based on our Met Office job application process, to give you experience of what it is like to apply for a job vacancy with us. Please be aware that you’ll need to submit all the work-based assignments you completed during the online work experience, as part of your application. So, please make sure you have them downloaded and ready to attach. Our in-person placements are highly sought-after, so the more effort you put into these assignments, the more likely you are to be offered an in-person placement.
The in-person work experience opportunities listed here have now closed. However, they give you an idea of the kinds of placements that we are able to offer. Feel free to follow the relevant links to familiarise yourself with the information we ask for. Further in-person placement opportunities will be added over the coming weeks and months. So, you may like to bookmark this page and regularly check for updates. We wish you luck with your applications!
Analysis and Visualisation of Data team
Location: Exeter
Dates: 128-30 August 2024
Application Deadline: Monday 15 July
Brief description of work area: The AVD (Analysis and Visualisation of Data) Team's Vision is “Enabling users to focus on Science through the provision of standard scientific tooling, support and best practice”. The AVD team writes and maintains open source Python software that is used for the analysis of meteorological and climatological data. This software is used by both forecasters and scientists at the Met Office and around the world. The team also spends a lot of time working directly with scientists to help them better use the software. This placement provides the opportunity to shadow our software developers in the AVD team. Work can vary depending on priorities and planned activities but may include: fixing bugs, working on new features, producing map visualisations, parallel computation of big data, supporting users of our software, discussing/debating future work.