Research software engineer

University of Illinois Chicago
United States, Illinois, Chicago
Feb 07, 2025
Research software engineer Research Software Engineer Hiring Department: Computer Science Location: Chicago, IL USA Requisition ID :1028265 Posting Close Date: 4/4/2025 Salary: $60,000.00 - $70,000.00 About the University of Illinois Chicago UIC is among the nation's preeminent urban public research universities, a Carnegie RU/VH research institution, and the largest university in Chicago. UIC serves over 34,000 students, comprising one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation and is designated as a Minority Serving Institution (MSI), an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPSI) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). Through its 16 colleges, UIC produces nationally and internationally recognized multidisciplinary academic programs in concert with civic, corporate and community partners worldwide, including a full complement of health sciences colleges. By emphasizing cutting-edge and transformational research along with a commitment to the success of all students, UIC embodies the dynamic, vibrant and engaged urban university. Recent "Best Colleges" rankings published by U.S. News & World Report, found UIC climbed up in its rankings among top public schools in the nation and among all national universities. UIC has over 300,000 alumni, and is one of the largest employers in the city of Chicago. The pay offered to the selected candidate will be determined based on factors including (but not limited to) the experience and qualifications of the selected candidate including equivalent years in rank, training, and field or discipline; internal equity; and external market pay for comparable jobs. For fullest consideration, please apply by March 31, 2025. Applications will be accepted until Posting Closing Date April 4, 2025. The University of Illinois Chicago offers a very competitive benefits portfolio. Click for a complete list of Employee Benefits. Job Description: This position provides expertise in handling large datasets, performing data analysis, and developing user-friendly, open-source data analytics tools. Duties and Responsibilities: Research software development & specialized expertise: Lead the research, design, implementation, and maintenance of urban computing software tools in close collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, ensuring that these tools are robust, reusable, and accessible. Contribute to research-driven design and development to produce well-documented, open-source software. Provide expertise in developing scalable, reusable, and interoperable urban computing tools, with an emphasis on advanced data discovery, data provenance, visualization, visual analytics, and machine learning technologies. Perform highly specialized work assignments in urban computing and data science, contributing to complex software projects within the NSF-funded OSCUR project. - Research collaboration: Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and other researchers to translate research requirements into technical solutions. Contribute to the design, implementation, and integration of research prototypes into usable open-source tools that address real-world challenges in urban computing and data science. Advise on software development best practices, methodologies, and specialized tools relevant to the field of urban computing and data analytics. - Research participation: Contribute to the research lifecycle of the project, including the preparation of publications, presentations, grant proposals, and other technical documents. Research and conceptualize innovative solutions to problems, providing expert recommendations and insights that guide the direction of research projects. - Prototyping: Lead the porting, refactoring, and integration of research prototypes into open-source software tools. Ensure these tools are user-friendly, well-documented, and designed for community contributions and reuse. - Data integration & management: Develop and manage advanced data pipelines for the collection, cleaning, analysis, and integration of large-scale, heterogeneous datasets. Design scalable systems for handling multimodal data, ensuring reliability, accessibility, and usability. Stay updated on relevant technical specifications and advancements in data handling and integration. - Open-source contributions: Manage and coordinate open-source contributions, including the review, assignment, and management of GitHub issues. Facilitate collaboration between internal and external contributors, ensuring alignment with project goals and interdisciplinary expectations. Liaise with other skilled specialists nationwide, fostering knowledge sharing and community involvement in urban computing challenges. - Mentorship & leadership: Supervise and mentor junior researchers, software engineers, and students. Lead training sessions, hackathons, and office hours to facilitate knowledge transfer and ensure project sustainability. - Team management: Manage and coordinate meetings between team members and external collaborators, helping to organize and lead interdisciplinary discussions. Manage and coordinate relationships with peers and other university personnel to achieve project objectives. Support the creation of user manuals, training materials, and other resources to facilitate knowledge sharing and community adoption of developed tools. - Knowledge sharing: Represent the OSCUR project at conferences, workshops, or campus initiatives, promoting the work of the project and building partnerships to support future research and development efforts. - Professional development: Stay abreast of developments in software engineering, urban computing, visual analytics and data analytics through professional development activities, workshops, and relevant literature. Other duties as assigned Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or closely related field. - Experience in designing, prototyping, testing, and maintaining software products, ideally within a research context. - Experience in designing, conducting, and analyzing experiments for research objectives, as well as proven ability to document results in research publications, technical reports, or grant proposals. - Research experience and knowledge in areas such as data science, machine learning, visual analytics, or visualization, with a proven ability to integrate these skills into collaborative research projects. - Experience with design studies in research contexts, including user-centered methodologies to understanding domain experts' needs and designing computational tools tailored to address specific research objectives. - Experience contributing technical expertise in specialized areas such as urban computing, data analytics, or research software engineering, with the ability to troubleshoot technical issues in these areas and work on interdisciplinary software projects. - Strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams. Preferred Qualifications : - Master's or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science or a closely related field. - 2 years of experience with software development, ideally within a research context. - Proven ability to work independently and in a collaborative environment with scientists, engineers, and students . - Proven ability to prioritize, organize, and complete tasks effectively. - Research Contributions: Experience collaborating on research projects, designing experiments, translating research needs into technical solutions, and contributing to the development of research-driven software tools. Involvement in co-authoring papers or technical reports is a plus. - Programming: Expertise in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and C++. - Web Development: Experience with front-end frameworks (React or Angular), back-end development (Flask or Node.js), and responsive design using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap. Experience contributing to research web applications is highly desirable. - Data Analytics: Proficiency in using advanced libraries such as OSMnx, Pandas, Geopandas, Pyrosm, and sklearn. Familiarity with machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch is highly desirable. Experience applying these tools to large-scale, research -oriented datasets and developing analytics solutions for research questions. - Visualization & Visual Analytics: Experience with data visualization libraries (Geopandas, Vega-Lite, Matplotlib, D3, UTK). - Data Handling & Deployment: Experience working with multimodal data (e.g., time series, 3D geometries), and deploying research software through container orchestration tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker) and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). - Deployment: Experience with PIP or conda deployment is a plus. - Software Testing: Proficiency in integration and testing tools and frameworks such as Jenkins, Pytest, or Postman. Ability to design tests for performance and scalability, especially for large urban datasets. - Open-Source Contributions: Experience in managing open-source projects and conducting software testing. The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify. The university provides accommodations to applicants and employees. Request an Accommodation To apply, visit https://uic.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/14051?c=uic Copyright 2024 Jobelephant.com Inc. All rights reserved. Posted by the FREE value-added recruitment advertising agency jeid-01d21335c8c01c4cb2d27e6112e72478