Research Software Engineer I/II

Classification Title:

Research Software Engineer II

Classification Minimum Requirements:

RSE Level I: A Bachelor’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and two years of experience; Master’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field.

RSE Level II: A Bachelor’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and three years of experience; Master’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and one year of experience; Doctoral Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field.

Applicants will be considered at the level for which they qualify. Appropriate college coursework or vocational/technical training may substitute at an equivalent rate for the required experience but does not negate the minimum degree requirement(s).

Job Description:

UF Information Technology (UFIT) is seeking an intermediate-level Research Software Engineer to join Research Computing, a unit within UFIT. The applicant is expected to work at locations across the campus to work closely with faculty and their research teams on software engineering in computational, data processing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects in research and education. The final applicant will be considered at the level for which they qualify. 

Employment with UFIT provides an excellent opportunity to work with other employees dedicated and focused on understanding and interpreting the technological needs of the University of Florida’s innovative and inspirational community. This position is in Gainesville, FL with flexible work arrangements possible. It is not a remote position.

UF has been operating HiPerGator, for close to a decade. It is the fastest supercomputer owned and operated by a university in the USA. HiPerGator has become a critical service for UF because of the growth of the community of researchers, faculty, students and collaborators that UF Research Computing serves not only in size but also in the breadth of research domains. The workloads running on HiPerGator cover a wide range of research disciplines, from physical science and engineering to medicine and drug discovery, as well as business, law, arts and humanities.  The demand for HiPerGator’s computing power to carry out research in foundational and use-inspired AI has also dramatically increased with UF’s AI Initiative and the recent success of generative AI such as ChatGPT in all aspects of human activity.

The University of Florida is seeking people who are looking for an exciting career supporting the research performed by world-class faculty and their students and collaborators in their quest to solve the most challenging problems facing the world today. The people in these positions are part of a collaborative team that values innovative ideas and viewpoints, and they will be expected to work closely in faculty-led teams in software engineering projects. This position will involve constant learning and professional development. If you think this environment is a match for you or an exciting challenge, you are encouraged to use the cover letter to explain why you are a good fit.

Some key responsibilities of this position are:

• Learn by independent study, reading textbooks and research papers, and online training materials about problem domains in which work is needed.
• Design, program, document, debug, test, deploy, and maintain software for specific projects in diverse scientific and scholarly domains.
• Follow best practices for software engineering and data science, including cybersecurity.
• Often, software to be developed will be open source, new or a contribution to an existing tool, library, or framework.
• Act as a consultant and mentor on software engineering principles for the project team you are part of for a given project.
• Contribute to papers and documentation to be produced as deliverables of the assigned project.
• Optimize code for performance and maintainability.
• Keep updated on new developments in software engineering techniques and tools that could improve research outcomes.

Professional development opportunities:

• Learning the underlying science for the software you are developing with the project team.
• Access a community of professionals who are committed to operating excellent research computing support.
• Take training through various options ranging from workshops and online training certificates to semester-long courses and degrees.

Qualifications

• A Bachelor/Master’s degree in computer science, engineering, sciences, or a related computational field is required