Senior Research Software Engineer (Data Specialist)

King's College London; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

King's College London is expanding its Research Software Engineering team, focusing on the PharosAI project. The successful candidate will support data-intensive research across disciplines, requiring strong programming skills and a collaborative approach. The role allows for personal development, offering a chance to work on impactful projects within a leading research institution.

Benefits

10% dedicated to personal development

Opportunities for part-time roles or job-sharing

Access to High Performance Computing resources

Qualifications

• Degree in computer science, bioinformatics, data science, or similar fields.
• Experience working on collaborative projects and leading teams.
• Ability to convey complex information to diverse audiences.

Responsibilities

• Contribute directly to software development for research projects.
• Deliver training in computational and data-science skills.
• Support researchers in developing code and implementing good practices in data stewardship.

Skills

Software development

Data analysis

Collaboration

Leadership

Data governance

Education

Degree in computational or data-intensive discipline

Tools

SQL

Python

R

Job description

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About us

King's e-Research department supports cutting edge computational and data intensive research across all disciplines at the College by providing both infrastructure and expertise within our research community. On the infrastructure side, we provide High Performance Compute, private and public cloud infrastructure and Trusted Research Environments as the core building blocks of modern, data driven research.

Alongside these, e-Research provides expertise in Research Software Engineering, Research Infrastructure Engineering and Data Governance to researchers through direct collaboration, training, one-to-one advice, policy development and community activities.

About the role

King's e-Research team are again expanding our Research Software Engineering function to support a wide range of projects and activities across the College. This advert is for a specialist in data who will be working primarily on the PharosAI project (more information below).

The e-Research team is a rapidly growing Department at King's College London (KCL) which has been created to enable and facilitate computational and data-intensive research across the university.

A core component of e-Research is supporting research through a Research Software Engineering function. Our team of Research Software Engineers (RSEs) elevate the level of computational- and data-science proficiency across campus, by:

1. Contributing directly to software development underpinning research projects,

2. Developing and delivering training on computational- and data-science skills,

3. Providing guidance to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers developing their own code, and

4. Establishing a community of developers of research software across the university

The Research Software Engineering team consists of RSEs with a wide range of different backgrounds and expertise, including both generalists and specialists, to support the full breadth of research across all our faculties. Within the team we also aim to cover a wide range on the "researcher to software engineer spectrum" and are able to offer some flexibility to RSEs in ways of working and a degree of research independence (e.g. seeking grant funding for RSE-driven projects).

KCL is a diverse, research-focused University with an annual research income of around £250 million across nine faculties. We therefore welcome applications from RSEs with a background in any computational or data-intensive discipline. A significant proportion of our research income is for projects within the Health Schools, so experience in a health-related area (e.g. computational biology, bioinformatics, biophysics, medical imaging, clinical data science, etc.) is welcomed, but is not a requirement.

This post will be offered on a full-time (35 hours per week), fixed term contract, though we would be open to discussion with candidates looking for part-time roles or job-sharing. All staff within e-Research are entitled to dedicate 10% of their time to a personal development topic of their choice.

Though we are initially offering a fixed-term contract for the duration of the PharosAI project, we do anticipate these posts being extended as part of the continuing growth of the core team, subject to further funding.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

Candidates must provide clear evidence of the following essential qualifications, experience and knowledge, for their application to be considered:

1. A Degree, Postgraduate qualification or equivalent experience in a computational or data-intensive discipline (e.g. computer science, bioinformatics, statistics, engineering, physics, data science, digital humanities, etc.)

2. Experience working on multiple-developer collaborative projects including a degree of leadership

3. Experience transforming and analysing large datasets to answer a stated research, clinical or business question.

4. Experience working with SQL and at least one other programming language commonly used in scientific computing (e.g. Python, R, C/C++, JavaScript, MATLAB, etc.)

5. Experience designing and implementing data standards, structures and transformations within the context of a wider project (e.g. ontologies, database structure, data pipelines, etc.)

6. Experience applying good practices in software engineering / data stewardship and motivating others to apply good practices in their own work (e.g. version control, unit testing, etc.).

7. Ability to convey complex technical information in appropriate levels of detail to both expert and non-expert audiences.

8. Ability to quickly acquire knowledge in a new domain or with unfamiliar technologies.

Desirable criteria

Candidates are asked to provide evidence of the following desirable skills, experience and knowledge in their application:

1. Experience developing and/or delivering training in computational- and data-science methods and best practices.

2. Experience working with either High Performance Computing (HPC), or public/private cloud environments

3. Experience in a community leadership role, for example within a research domain, an open-source software project, or an organised hobby group

4. Awareness of requirements and good practices in data governance (e.g. Data Protection Impact Assessments, Data Sharing Agreements, disclosure control)

5. Experience working with sensitive health data (e.g. patient records, medical imaging, genomics, etc.)

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click "Apply Now". This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

We aim to hold interviews remotely via Microsoft Teams within two weeks of applications closing.

The interviews will be one hour long and consist of a short presentation from the candidate, a discussion around some example research code, and questions from the interview panel to allow the candidate to demonstrate their knowledge and skills relevant to the role. In some cases we may need to hold a second round of interviews to decide between multiple strong candidates - in this case we will provide you with notice of the format as soon as we can.

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

As part of this commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ' How we Recruit ' pages.