Location: Southampton

Pay: Competitive hourly rate

Duration: 6-8 weeks  – flexible start dates

Roles: Various

If you would like to work on real business projects, are prepared to be thrown in at the deep end and want to work with others to find genuine business solutions then our summer intern programme could be the right opportunity for you.

Joining Ordnance Survey as one of our interns will give you a real-life view of what a career with Ordnance Survey would be like – and help you gain valuable insight into our business and culture. Working alongside our specialists in your chosen business area, you will build your skills and confidence as you share in our challenges and successes. 

Our placements are for 6-8 weeks and are based in our Southampton headquarters.

If you are an undergraduate in your first, second or penultimate year at university, take a look at the intern opportunities below for more information about what the business areas are looking for and how to apply.

• Technology
• Products and Innovation
• Operations
• HR
• Ordnance Survey Leisure
• Ordnance Survey International

About you

You will be an undergraduate in your first, second or penultimate year of study with 280 UCAS points or equivalent, who's on course for a 2:1.

In most cases it doesn't matter what degree you're studying for – most of our business areas accept students from any discipline. Some of our opportunities do lend themselves to certain disciplines and where this is the case, it will be highlighted within each opportunity. For our Technology internships you will need to be studying for a degree in a computing discipline.

What is just as important is your can do attitude and how you have used your communication and team working skills both at university and in other areas of your life to achieve results.

You will need to demonstrate a genuine commitment to the internship for which you are applying. That doesn’t mean you cannot apply for more than one; it does mean you will have to demonstrate your interest in each one individually. 

How to apply

Once you have read about each of the internships we are offering and decided which is right for you, you will need to send us your CV and a letter which covers the following things to recruitmentcv@ordnancesurvey.co.uk, Please make sure you include the reference number relevant to the role you are applying for:

Which internship you are applying for, and why

In this section, briefly outline what interests you about the opportunity and how this fits in to your future career plans.

Your communications skills

We look for people, who are able to talk and engage with a wide range of others and who can write succinctly and clearly

How you work with others

We need to know about how you have worked successfully in a team, or even how you have led a group of people to achieve success

What you have achieved

We are looking for interns who can really get things done, so give us an outline of something you have achieved that really took effort and how you managed to deliver in spite of challenges or obstacles

We only want a paragraph on each – and your letter should be no more than 2 sides of A4 in total – it’s quality not quantity that counts.

After the closing date, we will review all applications and, if you are successful at that stage, we will then invite you to a short interview - face to face or by telephone. We will let you know if you have been successful in securing your chosen internships within a few days and then agree exactly when you will start.

Do you need a Work Permit?
We're unable to obtain work permits for internships and you may want to check whether you have the right to work in the UK Civil Service before you apply at www.civilservice.gov.uk

Technology (Ref SIT0513)

Within our IS group, you could be working in development or service delivery – and with a full programme of work scheduled over the summer, we are looking for a number of interns to help us deliver to our internal customers.

If your preference is working in development, then you could be working on one of our three key streams – geospatial, web or business systems. In either stream, you would work within an agile development team on real business needs; analysis, technical evaluation and testing would all be part of your role as you helped to shaped new systems and work.

Within service delivery you will be working alongside senior managers and their teams to implement infrastructure projects and help with the early shaping and evaluation of technology projects central to our future business success.

To apply for these internships, you will need to be studying for a degree in a computing discipline, have excellent business focused behaviours and a real “can-do” attitude.  We are looking for individuals with a real passion and interest in IT.

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Products and Innovation (Ref SIPI0513)

Product Prototyping

Working as an intern in Product Prototyping you could be focusing on any one of the many data prototypes being developed and which currently include 3D content and network products. In this role, you will find yourself working in a team of geospatial developers creating geographic data (eg. real world features such as buildings and rivers, and their location within Great Britain), before analysing and transforming it into a prototype of a new Ordnance Survey product.  This role is likely to suit a computer science or geography student, preferably with a background or interest in geographic information systems (GIS).

Developer Engagement Team

The Developer Engagement Team encourages organisations, startups and individuals to innovate using Ordnance Survey tools and data. Joining this small, externally focused team, you'll be using your web and app experience to review existing programmes globally and help develop our engagement strategy. In addition, you will be working alongside the community manager and senior managers to create effective content for the developer website, including coding tools, videos and blogs. This great role would suit a candidate who understands developers, but wishes to gain experience in community building.

Innovation Labs

You will join a small team of developers working with the latest web, mobile and geospatial technology. Our Labs team work on short, focused projects delivering working prototypes that inform our future product and service roadmaps. We work on many exciting ideas in a great environment that encourages creativity and an entrepreneurial mind-set.

This role requires some experience developing for web or mobile platforms, though we’ll consider candidates studying any discipline. Knowledge of mapping and geospatial concepts is not essential but an interest in this area would certainly be useful.

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Operations (Ref SIO0513)

Operations is responsible for the collection, collation and quality of our data. We are continuously thinking of new ways to improve our production processes by innovative use of Geographic Information and web services. If you have knowledge and experience of developing standard GIS applications and building web applications for GI data then we can offer you an opportunity to develop your skills further by helping us to develop a proof of concept project.

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HR (Ref SIHR0513)

At Ordnance Survey we are committed to working with our people – they are our most valuable asset. Attracting and recruiting the right talent, developing internal skills, coaching managers to support and develop their teams, introducing innovative reward and recognition systems or finding smarter ways to work – our HR team is a true business partner.

The 6-8 week internship within HR will give you a chance to work on real business projects alongside our operational and expert HR areas – this could include HR Business Partnering, Reward, Talent, Learning and Development, HR Policy or Employee Relations. We also have some major projects launching over the summer including the introduction of our new competency framework so there will be plenty for you to do and whichever area you work with, you will gain an insight into how HR can add real business value.

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Ordnance Survey Leisure (OSL) (Ref SIOSL0513)

OSL focuses on our consumer business – the maps and products that people reply on for all their leisure activities.

Working as an Intern with OSL you could be focusing on one of two projects;

Website project

We want someone to help maximise the commercial impact of our website and identify the best way to track performance of our web sales. In this role, you will find yourself leading a conversion optimisation project gathering data, monitoring and analysing test results and building a data set which will support how we deliver improvements to our business.

For this role, you are likely to be relatively analytical, with a keen interest in e-commerce and will probably be studying Marketing although we will consider other disciplines.

getamap^TM Project

In this role, you will be working on the development of one of our most popular services - getamap^TM. getamap^TM is an online subscription based service giving users access to the full set of Ordnance Survey consumer mapping with the ability to plan routes, find points of interest, check the weather and generally make the most of the great outdoors. Your role will be to review and recommend where we can add additional value to this proposition.

This role is likely to suit a business studies student with a keen interest in marketing, customer relationship management and customer retention.  Again, we will consider other disciplines.

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Ordnance Survey International (Ref SIINT0513)

Ordnance Survey International was launched in September 2012 to offer consultancy and development support to other National Mapping Agencies interested in our expertise and domain knowledge.

As an intern in our small but dynamic team, your main role will be to help develop our product and service marketing material but you could also find yourself getting involved in other projects as you challenge our existing thinking and contribute to our success. For this role, you will need excellent writing skills and the ability to turn technical concepts into compelling copy – and you will also need to be flexible, resilient and prepared to turn your hand to anything.

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Closing date: 17 May 2013  

Equal opportunities

Ordnance Survey is an equal opportunities employer and encourages applications from individuals regardless of their gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital status or pregnancy and maternity.