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Senior Research Software Engineer

Princeton University

Job Description


Do you have a background in humanities research and love to write code? Do you want to enable and advance cutting-edge computational research? If so, Princeton University's Research Computing department is recruiting a Senior Research Software Engineer to join the fast-growing Research Software Engineering (RSE) Group.

 

We are looking for a new team member to expand the software capabilities of the Princeton Geniza Project (PGP), a groundbreaking project focused on documents from the premodern Middle East. Working closely with the PI, you will employ methods such as handwritten text recognition (HTR ), natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision to solve research problems and accelerate the transcription, analysis and identification of tens of thousands of handwritten texts in Hebrew and Arabic script. You may also enhance and extend the capabilities of the PGP web application and related datasets. Your critical software engineering contributions will enable researchers from Princeton and around the world to make new discoveries about the history and culture of a diverse array of Middle Eastern populations, including groups previously invisible in the historical record. Familiarity with Arabic, Hebrew or their scripts is not required, but would be a plus.

 

As a Senior RSE, you will also mentor and provide technical leadership to the Research Software Engineering team, as well as teach advanced computational techniques to raise the computational capability of the team. You will have the opportunity to co-author scholarly publications.

 

If you have a strong background in software engineering and academic research, you have the right skill set to make an immediate impact on this and other high-profile research projects. You will grow and expand your programming skills and expertise to tackle a dynamic new set of research problems. This position will require you to work closely with colleagues in the Office of Information Technology (OIT) as well as with faculty, student/postdoctoral researchers, and technical staff in academic departments to enable and accelerate new research efforts. You will work closely with the departments of Near Eastern Studies and History and interact with the Center for Digital Humanities

 

This role functions within a dynamic, supportive team environment that permits people from diverse backgrounds to thrive, including those wanting to make a career change and those with non-traditional career tracks, educational paths, or life experiences. If this environment sounds like a strong match or even an exciting challenge, we encourage you to apply and use your cover letter to explain why you would be a good fit for the role.

 

In the RSE group, we collectively provide computational research expertise to multiple divisions within the University. As a central team of software experts, we are focused on improving the quality, performance, and sustainability of Princeton’s computational research software. Our group is committed to building collaborative environments in which the best software engineering practices are valued, and to sharing and applying cross-disciplinary computational techniques in new and emerging areas.



  • Has a strong command of the Python programming language and of machine learning as applied to texts that are handwritten and/or in right-to-left scripts, with proficient understanding of the underlying science, math, statistics, data analysis, and algorithms of computational research questions at a level sufficient to converse on projects with Princeton’s world-class researchers to consistently contribute to the ongoing work. This may consist of keeping abreast of advances in the domain, independent research (reading publications, etc.) and/or studying existing code bases.
  • Working independently, initiate open collaboration with researchers. Regularly meet with, listen to, and ask questions of researchers to ensure that engineered solutions fit the research need. Understand and address software engineering questions that arise in research planning.
  • Apply appropriate domain specific algorithms, techniques, and code to advance software engineering in the research field.
  • Working independently guided by high level objectives, to quickly translate research priorities into flexible software solutions that consistently contribute to ongoing research project(s)
  • Independently use researcher-provided requirements and desired end state to build software solutions. To achieve this, RSEs are expected to figure out the problem through independent research, develop an appropriate solution, and provide full documentation for usage by the research team.
  • Identify solutions for each project, establish a set of applicable best practices for individual or team use that is uniquely appropriate for that project (e.g., version control, continuous integration and continuous delivery, software design, programming model, etc.), and enable long term maintainability and sustainability by documenting the projects in a descriptive and appropriately detailed manner. Independently provide technical expertise and guidance for improving the performance and quality of new and existing code bases through hands-on work with ongoing research.
  • Responding to evolving research needs, apply broad research software engineering experience to develop novel, creative, and robust software solutions to solve challenging research problems quickly and efficiently. Port, debug, tune and potentially parallelize existing research code to meet criteria set by the research needs.
  • Develop novel, creative, and robust software tools that allow researchers to interact in flexible ways with extremely large data sets quickly and efficiently.
  • Independently develops scope and project management plans, sets and meets milestone delivery timeline, and proactively communicates with the research team. Communicate complex software engineering concepts with project teams consisting of domain experts with a varying degree of software engineering knowledge.
  • Raise the computational capability of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers through training and workshops, consultation, knowledge transfer, expertise, and best practices
  • Show technical leadership through mentoring, instructing, and educating less experienced Research Software Engineers in advanced computational techniques learned from developing novel research software engineering project solutions.
  • In collaboration with RSE group leadership and other senior RSEs, contribute to the organization of professional development and team growth activities.
  • Maintaining technical skill set and expertise to include software development tools and techniques, software engineering best practices, programming languages, high-performance computing hardware, and computational research solutions. Focused on advancing depth of knowledge in key areas dictated by the research.


Essential Qualifications

  • 7+ years’ experience as a Research Software Engineer or equivalent experience (e.g., graduate school, industry experience, open-source software development, etc.).
  • Strong programming skills, particularly in Python.
  • Experience developing web applications, especially with Django.
  • Experience constructing, maintaining, and using large databases.
  • Experience with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), computer vision and image analysis.
  • Some understanding of historical databases and a willingness to acquire domain-specific knowledge.
  • Demonstrated success:
    • Consistently using conventional and readable coding style.
    • Performing test-driven development.
    • Creating comprehensive and well-written documentation.
    • Participating in regular code reviews as both a reviewer and reviewee.
    • Developing and maintaining reproducible build systems.
    • Using version control systems.
  • Demonstrated successes contributing to a collaborative research team.
  • Ability to work independently.
  • Ability to learn new programming languages and technologies beyond area of core knowledge.
  • Ability to communicate effectively with a diverse user base having varied levels of technical proficiencies.
  • Experience working in an academic research environment.
  • Education: A Bachelor's degree in the humanities, computer science, or other relevant field is required. A Master’s/Ph.D. in a relevant field with a strong computational focus or equivalent experience in a research setting preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Domain-specific research experience.
  • Knowledge of written Arabic and/or written Hebrew is a plus.
  • Experience in High-Performance Data Analytics (HPDA), including any of the following fields: cluster analysis, pattern recognition, and AI/ML techniques such as convolutional neural networks.
  • Experience tuning and optimizing research software and algorithms.
  • Experience developing research software outside of core domain knowledge.

 

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS



36.25

No

Yes

180 days

No

No

No

Mid-Senior Level

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