AI-Driven Beamline Controls Engineer

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste; Trieste/Trst; On-site; EUR 31,000 - 33,000; Full time

Job summary

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste invites a PhD-level software engineer to design, develop and validate a domain-specific AI-assisted software environment for the Elettra 2.0 beamlines, starting at the HF-SAXS beamline and collaborating with scientists, engineers and data specialists.

You will build architecture, integrate AI code generation with BEAMline control systems (GEKO, BACS) and FAIR data management, ensuring secure, reproducible software through CI/CD and rigorous validation.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Control Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Physics, or closely related discipline.
• Strong software development skills, preferably Python and languages used for scientific/control apps, with modular architecture, APIs and Linux-based environments.
• Experience with version control, code review, automated testing, CI and developing maintainable, documented software.
• Hands-on experience with LLM-based coding assistants, code-generation tools or agentic development workflows, including context design, retrieval and evaluation of generated code.
• Experience in distributed control, data acquisition, scientific instrumentation software, or integration of heterogeneous hardware and software systems.
• Ability to translate scientific/operational needs into verifiable software requirements with emphasis on security, provenance and documentation.

Responsibilities

• Collect and formalize beamline use cases, software requirements and acceptance criteria, and define an architecture.
• Develop the system so that generated code and development workflows align with the Elettra 2.0 control environment (GEKO, BACS and interfaces).
• Build context for AI tools from source repositories, APIs, device specifications and procedures, linking with FAIR data-management infrastructure, preserving metadata and provenance.
• Integrate AI-assisted code generation with version control, peer review, automated testing, CI, ensuring reproducibility and security with human approval before deployment.
• Implement and evaluate the HF-SAXS pilot across control, data-acquisition and scientific workflows; document results and plan adoption roadmap.

Skills

Python

APIs

Linux

Version control

Automated testing

Continuous integration

LLM-based coding

Code generation tools

Distributed control

Education

PhD or equivalent (CS/SE/CE/EE/Physics)

Tools

GEKO

BACS

Job description

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste invites a PhD-level software engineer to design, develop and validate a domain-specific AI-assisted software environment for the Elettra 2.0 beamlines, starting at the HF-SAXS beamline and collaborating with scientists, engineers and data specialists.

You will build architecture, integrate AI code generation with BEAMline control systems (GEKO, BACS) and FAIR data management, ensuring secure, reproducible software through CI/CD and rigorous validation.