Research Software Engineer

Earlham Institute; Norwich; On-site; GBP 38,000 - 53,000; Full time

Job summary

The Earlham Institute in Norwich, UK, invites applications for a Research Software Engineer or Senior Research Software Engineer to join Professor Ke Li's AI for Biology Group. The role focuses on designing and building an AI-agent platform linking models, tools, datasets, and workflows for AI-driven biological discovery.

Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent experience, strong software engineering skills, and a track record in complex research software, AI systems or data-intensive

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent research/industrial experience in CS/AI or related field.
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience with complex research software.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the AI-agent platform for the programme.
• Implement agent orchestration, tool registries, data interfaces and model integration.
• Develop reusable agentic workflows and a demonstrator for scientific reasoning and hypothesis generation.
• Ensure robust evaluation, versioning, provenance and safe tool execution.
• Collaborate with AI researchers and biologists to enable AI-driven discovery.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Research software development

Education

PhD or equivalent

Tools

Containers

CI/CD

APIs

Databases

Workflow tools

Job description

Applications are invited for a Research Software Engineer or Senior Research Software Engineer to join Professor Ke Li's AI for Biology Group in the Research Faculty of the Earlham Institute, based in Norwich, UK.

Background:

The AI for Biology Group will be newly established at the Earlham Institute (EI), building on Professor Ke Li's established and well-funded research programme in fundamental AI, biological foundation models, AI co-scientists and automated scientific discovery. At EI, the group will develop a Generative Digital Biology (GDB) programme: experimentally grounded AI systems that learn from biological data, support hypothesis generation, guide experimental design and accelerate discovery.

The role:

We are seeking a technically strong, research-focused Research Software Engineer to design and build the AI-agent platform for the programme. You will connect AI models, scientific tools, biological datasets, experimental-design methods, compute infrastructure, laboratory automation and human decision-making into usable systems for AI-driven biological discovery.

The work will include AI Co-Scientist architecture, agent orchestration, tool registries, model and data interfaces, workflow execution, versioning and provenance, robust evaluation, permissioning, sandboxing and safe tool execution. You will develop reusable agentic workflows and an extensible demonstrator for scientific reasoning, hypothesis generation, experimental planning, result interpretation and human-AI interaction.

Biology and laboratory-automation experience are desirable but not essential; we welcome candidates from AI systems, research software engineering, robotics, scientific computing and related fields. The post offers an opportunity to release high-quality research software, contribute to high-impact research and support future funding applications.

The successful candidate will have a PhD, or equivalent research or industrial experience at a comparable level, in Computer Science, AI, Robotics, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Scientific Computing, Data Science, Computational Biology or a closely related quantitative discipline.

They will demonstrate strong hands-on software engineering ability and experience developing complex research software, AI systems, agentic workflows, scientific platforms, robotics/automation software or data-intensive infrastructure. They should be able to build robust and reproducible software using appropriate version control, testing, documentation, containers, APIs, databases, workflow tools and CI/CD, with deployment experience on HPC, GPU, cloud or distributed-computing environments.

Additional information:

• Salary on appointment will be within the range £38,000 to £46,500 per annum depending on qualifications and experience for the SC6 level post, and £47,450 to £52,560 per annum for candidates who meet the SC5 level criteria.
• This is a full-time post for a contract of 36 months, with possible extension.
• This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply.
• As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.
• The closing date for applications will be 18 September 2026.