I listen to many podcasts, especially while training at the gym and during my train commute. One of them is “Ditching Hourly” by Jonathan Stark. I also subscribed to his mailing list. In one of his newsletters, titled “What do you do?”, he discusses different ways to describe what do you do, with a focus on what is your value in terms of client outcomes (i.e., how would I be able to help a possible client to solve his problems). This discussion really resonated with me, since many times I find it difficult to describe what is exactly that I do to someone not working in my field. Depending on when I talk to, I would say “I work with computers” or “I do scientific software development”.
I have used the titles “meteorological software developer” or “computational physicist” in the past. These days I do mostly data processing from NWP models to monitor and improve their performance. I could say:
“I optimize the performance of operational weather models by monitoring
the quality of their output and carefully assessing their predictions.
I do a fair amount of data engineering, quality assessment and post-processing.”
But this is still a “me focused” approach to describe what I do. It is diffcult for me to think in terms of “client outcomes”, since I do not do any client per se or any freelance work (but I might in the future). But thinking in those terms I could probably put it this way:
“I can analyse and explain historical weather events and complex meteorological issues in a clear way. I do development, maintenance and monitoring of the quality and quantity of system outputs related to scientific meteorological data and research. I have experience working alongside developers in a multidisciplinary team. I develop CI pipelines with multiple checks, tests, and validations. I am used to work with ~terabyte-sized model output and observational data. I have worked in a wide range of industries including public services/government sectors. I can support all quantitative needs in weather and climate consultancy projects and provide answers to questions relevant to the safe, successful and efficient operation of businesses.”