Research Assistant (Platform Engineer)

National University of Singapore; Singapore; On-site; SGD 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

The National University of Singapore invites applications for the position of Research Assistant (Platform Engineer) for Horizons Office, School of Computing (SoC). This role is dedicated to building an AI-powered research platform, ensuring backend, data, and AI systems run reliably at scale.

You will own the platform, collaborating with the PI and lab members to deploy services, optimize databases, and improve monitoring and tooling for robust, reproducible experiments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in CS, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• At least 3 years of relevant work experience in platform, DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure engineering roles.
• Strong experience with Linux, Docker, infrastructure as code, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience operating production services, databases, distributed jobs, and observability systems.
• Ability to diagnose performance and reliability issues across the stack.
• Interest in AI/ML research or large-scale experimental systems.
• Pragmatic and comfortable working across boundaries in a small, early-stage team.

Responsibilities

• Deploy and operate backend services, databases, workers, and AI infrastructure.
• Build and improve reliable infrastructure for data processing and distributed workloads.
• Optimize PostgreSQL performance, backups, and reliability.
• Improve monitoring, logging, deployment, and production reliability.
• Contribute to backend services and internal tooling.
• Support research projects by turning experiments into robust pipelines.
• Assist with data collection and processing workflows.

Skills

Linux

SRE

Distributed systems

Observability

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Docker

Infrastructure as Code

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

PostgreSQL

Vector databases

Python

Redis

Job description

Company description

The National University of Singapore is the national research university of Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest higher education institution in Singapore

Job description

Job Description

The National University of Singapore invites applications for the position of Research Assistant (Platform Engineer) for Horizons Office, School of Computing (SoC). This role is strongly committed to research excellence in all its dimensions: searching for fundamental results and insights, developing novel computational solutions to a wide range of applications, building large-scale experimental systems and improving the well-being of society.

We are building an AI-powered research platform, which requires a platform engineer to help build and operate the infrastructure that keeps our backend, data, and AI systems reliable and scalable. The successful candidate will work closely with the Principal Investigator and lab members on one or more research projects, owning the platform that researchers depend on to run experiments, process data, and deploy AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Deploy and operate backend services, databases, workers, and AI infrastructure.
• Build and improve reliable infrastructure for data processing and distributed workloads.
• Optimize PostgreSQL performance, backups, and reliability.
• Improve monitoring, logging, deployment, and production reliability.
• Contribute to backend services and internal tooling where needed.
• Work closely with the Principal Investigator and lab members to support research projects, turning experimental workflows into robust, reproducible pipelines.
• Support research activities such as running experiments, data collection and processing, and documenting systems and results.

Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Job Requirements

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a relevant discipline.
• At least 3 years of relevant work experience in platform, DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure engineering roles.
• Strong experience with Linux, Docker, infrastructure as code, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure)."
• Experience operating production services, databases, distributed jobs, and observability systems.
• Ability to diagnose performance and reliability issues across the stack.
• Experience or strong interest in research, in areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Programming Languages & Software Engineering, or large-scale experimental systems.
• Pragmatic and comfortable working across boundaries in a small, early-stage team.

Nice to Have

• Python and PostgreSQL development experience.
• Experience with Redis, queues, or distributed processing.
• Experience operating AI-powered applications or data pipelines.
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, search, or RAG systems.
• Prior research experience, publications, or contributions to open-source research tooling.

More Information

Location: Kent Ridge Campus

Organization: School of Computing

Department : Department of Computer Science

Employee Referral Eligible: No

Job requisition ID : 34334