Research Software Engineer

Salary:

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £35,880 to £45,163 with potential progression once in post to £47,874

Advanced Research Computing (ARC), at the University of Birmingham, is seeking to appoint a permanent Research Software Engineer to our RSE Service. As an award winning team, ARC has earned a national and international profile.

As part of our RSE team you will be working with researchers, providing the knowledge and skills to develop, improve, maintain and support high quality software that fulfils the requirements of research projects. The work will be varied and challenging, supporting a broad spectrum of research from Digital Humanities to Cancer Research on projects ranging from a few hours to months or years.

You will join the Research Software Group's RSE Service within ARC. We will encourage and support you in developing your skills, both through formal training and with mentoring from highly skilled colleagues within ARC. You will work in a helpful and collaborative environment, interacting with other team members doing similar tasks and sharing knowhow on a daily basis.

We welcome candidates looking for flexible working patterns. There is an expectation that candidates will spend some time on our wonderful campus each week and any flexible patterns will need to be agreed in advance.

Main Duties

• Provide advice, support, coaching, and coding services; crucially always with the aim of ownership and responsibility remaining with the research group. Prioritise tasks across multiple engagements to meet agreed objectives, ensuring effective communication to project leads. Manage the expectations of researchers and research groups. Engage with researchers at all development stages and disseminate best practices in the development of sustainable research software.
• Take responsibility and work collaboratively with research groups from across the University for the definition, documentation, development and satisfactory completion of collaborative software projects: defining requirements; devising solutions; agreeing timescales and priorities as well as identifying the risks to be managed. Each of these engagements will be unique in nature and complexity. They will typically range from requiring a few days to several months of effort.
• Deliver training courses, devising content where applicable or, where qualified, delivering externally validated material, e.g. Software Carpentries. Content will vary from introductory to specialised and advanced levels.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) preferably in a subject with a strong software engineering component or relevant technical qualification and considerable relevant experience. Where no equivalent qualification is held, significant practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of more demanding roles will be required demonstrating the conceptual understanding required.
• Experience successfully developing software in collaboration with other people, ideally in a research environment.
• Experience of programming and programming languages – including strong expertise in at least one of Python, R, C++ or Fortran.
• Knowledge of good practice for software development and analysis processes, tools and techniques.

Informal enquires please contact Adrian Garcia via a.garcia.1@bham.ac.uk

To download the full job description and details of this position and submit an electronic application online please click on the 'Apply' button above:

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment

We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working.

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