SMART Buildings R&D Engineer (KTP Associate) (1FTE/FTC 30 months)

The main purpose of the role is to contribute to the delivery of a 30-month project which aims to develop, test, verify, and launch a Digital Twin platform to support the life span of physical assets by remotely monitoring their condition and health, which will enable proactive maintenance, service, and repair for commercial clients in the UK facilities management sector.

We are seeking a Smart Building Development Engineer to support the design, development and operation of Digital Twin solutions for various built environment applications. The role sits at the intersection of building physical equipment, data engineering and software development for data science, focusing on turning live operational data from buildings into reliable, usable Digital Twin capabilities.

You will work with data from building management systems (BMS), energy, environmental and occupancy systems, helping to integrate disparate sources into a coherent Digital Twin architecture. The role is practical and delivery-focused, with an emphasis on robust data pipelines, system integration and operational insight, rather than visualisation alone.

This is a hands-on role suited to someone who enjoys working with real assets and real data, and who is motivated by improving how buildings are understood, operated and maintained. You will collaborate with engineers, estates teams and digital specialists to ensure Digital Twin solutions are technically sound, scalable, secure and genuinely useful to end users.

The role offers the opportunity to work on complex buildings or estates, contribute to the evolution of Digital Twin platforms, and help shape how digital approaches support building performance, resilience and long-term value. We would particularly welcome applicants with industry experience in developing intelligent systems that support decision-making using supervised and unsupervised learning, and with a clear understanding of data in the context of physical systems as well as development of predictive analytics targeting the degradation of such systems.

The duties and responsibilities will include – sensor deployment and integration, and development of the data-pipeline/ infrastructure capable of supporting the realisation of data-enabled services for a wide variety of customers. The job involves interaction with the customers and their equipment base, mapping of their engineering and business challenges, articulation of the requirements for DT design and development, deployment of sensing capabilities, design and deployment of DT models and predictive analytics. The job also involves working very closely with the SOLIS Group’s IT manager to ensure the DT solutions meet the company’s and its customers’ cyber security requirements.  Additional desirable experience includes managing data pipelines that involve data ingestion, transformation, integration, and cloud-based storage; deploying AI systems using cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), containerisation (Docker), API endpoints, and model inference optimisation; particularly in collaboration with senior leadership or communities to co-design solutions aligned with organisational needs of various customers.

The job will require an entrepreneurship mindset (awareness of commercialisation of Product-Service Systems/Software as a Service). It will often involve work (installation of sensing technologies, configuration of edge devices and communication infrastructure) and meetings at customers’ sites.

The position offers the KTP Associate the following benefits:

• £5,000 to spend on personal training
• Excellent opportunity of a permanent position with the company in a leadership role
• Being part of a young and very dynamic results-driven engineering team. Benefits working for Solis Group include 28 days annual leave increasing to 33 days, workplace pension, private health insurance, gym membership, birthdays off, duvet day, training and development opportunities, social team-building events
• You will own and drive your applied R&D KTP project, linked to both a university and a business whose experienced teams will provide you with full support. Applying academic knowledge to a real-world challenge, this is a chance to deliver impactful technical solutions and rapidly grow your career with the company.
• A KTP could be the perfect launchpad, helping enhance your career by managing a challenging project central to a business’s strategic development and long-term growth (clear route to market already identified with the KTP Associate being responsible to design and deploy the DT solution via the KTP project).
• You can choose a variety of training modules during your KTP: project management, marketing and communication, finance, leadership and/or personal development, as well as job-specific technical training.

Within the first 6 months, you will have:

• Gained a strong understanding of the building estate, asset types and data landscape, including BMS, energy, environmental and techniques required to monitor pumps (and their energy consumption), plant rooms, boilers (safety/alarms - temperature and pressure) and remote testing in water tanks for compliance around legionella.
• Contributed to the development and stabilisation of Digital Twin data pipelines, improving data quality, reliability and accessibility.
• Supported the integration of multiple building systems into a coherent Digital Twin architecture, working effectively with engineers, data specialists and estates teams.

Within 12 months, you will:

• Be independently delivering robust Digital Twin features that support building performance monitoring, fault detection and operational decision-making.
• Have helped establish repeatable, scalable approaches to data ingestion, integration and modelling across buildings or estates.
• Be recognised as a trusted technical contributor, able to translate building and engineering requirements into effective Digital Twin solutions that are usable by real-world operators and decision-makers.

Apply Now - My Job Scotland