Do you have a background in computational research and love to write code? Do you want to help enable and advance groundbreaking computational research in macro-scale energy systems engineering? If so, Princeton University's Research Computing department is recruiting a Research Software Engineer II to join the fast-growing Research Software Engineering (RSE) Group.  

 

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.  

 

In this position, you will be an integral member of both the RSE Group and the Zero-carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization Laboratory (ZERO Lab, led by Prof. Jesse D. Jenkins) focused on cutting-edge computational research in sustainable energy systems. You will contribute to the research team by developing efficient and scalable research code and by providing computational expertise in software development, algorithm selection, and optimization. You will manage and develop multiple open-source research codes, mentor and train students and postdocs on the research team on modern research software engineering practices, and help maintain and support vibrant communities of users and contributors to the group’s open-source software projects. Research Software Engineers II work closely with a team of researchers and Research Software Engineers to leverage their communication and problem-solving skills to build complete software solutions crucial to the advancement of research.  

 

If you have a strong background in scientific programming, high performance computing, or academic research, you have the right skill set to make an immediate impact on multiple high-profile research projects. You will be poised to grow and expand your programming and data analytics expertise into 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 to enable and accelerate their research computing efforts. 

 

This role functions within a dynamic, supportive team environment that permits 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. 

• Fully understands the role within the research domain and working towards advanced proficiency in the underlying science, math, statistics, data analysis, and algorithms of computational research questions at a level sufficient to converse with Princeton’s world-class researchers to support the ongoing work. This will consist of independent research (reading publications etc.) and/or studying existing code bases. 
• Working independently or in collaboration with a team, initiate and/or maintain 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 with minimal guidance to understand and translate research priorities into flexible software solutions. 
• Independently or in collaboration with a team, use researcher-provided requirements and desired end state to build complete software solutions. To achieve this, RSEs are expected to figure out the problem through independent or team research, build complete software solutions, and provide full documentation for usage by the research team.   
• Identify solutions for each project, establish a set of applicable best practices 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 or in collaboration with a team, 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 research software engineering experience to develop robust software solutions to solve challenging research problems. Port, debug, tune and potentially parallelize existing research code to meet criteria set by the research needs. 
• Develop software tools that allow researchers to interact in flexible ways with extremely large data sets. 
• Independently or in collaboration with a team, develops scope and project management plans, meets milestone delivery timeline, and communicates with the research team. Communicate software engineering concepts with project teams consisting of domain experts with a varying degree of software engineering knowledge. 
• Interact with and support the vibrant open-source communities surrounding the group’s open-source software projects. This includes reviewing (and potentially integrating) code from open-source contributors and supporting both local and remote users. 
• Actively expanding 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. 
   

Essential Qualifications

• 4-8 years’ experience as a Research Software Engineer or equivalent experience (e.g., graduate school, industry experience, open-source software development, etc.). 
• Exhibits programming skills, particularly in the languages used in our computational research applications (most importantly the Julia programming language, secondarily Python).  
• Experience creating and using Jupyter Notebooks. 
• Experience managing open-source software development. 
• Demonstrated success:  
  • Consistently using conventional and readable coding style.  
  • Creating comprehensive and well-written documentation.  
  • 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. 
• Ability to mentor and train students and postdocs on subjects related to research software engineering. 
• Education: A Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, sciences, or related computational field required. A Masters/Ph.D. in computer science, applied science, or other related field with a strong computational focus or equivalent experience in a research setting preferred. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building graphical user interfaces for interactive software applications. 
• Experience with cloud computing. 
• Knowledge of linear algebra and experience with optimization-based modeling and related tools (e.g., Gurobi, CPLEX) 
• Experience with code parallelization. 
• Experience tuning and optimizing research software and algorithms.  
• Experience developing research software outside of core domain knowledge.  
• Background in a related domain is helpful, but not required. 

 

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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