Assistant Research Scientist (PREP0003947)

The Chronicle Of Higher Education, Inc.; Gaithersburg (MD); On-site; USD 47,000 - 67,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Retirement package

Job summary

The Chronicle Of Higher Education, Inc. is seeking a candidate for a role involving collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Johns Hopkins University. The position focuses on research in drone communications simulation for unmanned aircraft systems, requiring a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field and experience with software development, AI tools, and understanding of network communications. The salary range is $47,000–$67,000. The role offers substantial opportunities to contribute to innovative solutions in public safety.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field.
• Knowledge of robotics, UAS, or autonomous software programming.
• Experience in development and manipulation of software code, such as Python, C, C++, Qt, JavaScript.

Responsibilities

• Conduct a literature review and document criteria for drone communications simulator solutions.
• Develop open-source code and processes for drone communications simulation.
• Create and collect measurement data for the drone simulator.

Skills

Knowledge of network communications

Experience in Python

Knowledge of robotics

Experience with AI tools

Knowledge of data structures

Experience with C++

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Python

JavaScript

Job description

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). It involves collaborating with NIST and Johns Hopkins University on research in drone communications simulation for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), supporting first responder solutions.

Salary Range: $47,000 – $67,000. The referenced salary range represents the minimum and maximum salaries for this position and is based on Johns Hopkins University's good faith belief at the time of posting. The actual compensation offered to the selected candidate may vary and will ultimately depend on multiple factors, including geographic location, skills, experience, internal equity, market conditions, education/training, and other factors as reasonably determined by the University.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct a literature review and document criteria for drone communications simulator solutions and the datasets used to train and test them.
• Prepare an industry landscape identifying long‑range communications, mesh networking, and best practices for developing communication technologies.
• Develop a software program for a new drone communications simulator platform or retrofit an existing platform, integrating radio hardware communication components.
• Develop open‑source code and processes.
• Create and collect measurement data for the drone simulator.
• Document the dataset curation process for public use and determine target public‑safety datasets and dataset enhancement options.
• Participate in public‑safety working groups and stakeholder testing to compare simulations with live UAS flights and curate shared information from collaborators.
• Evaluate drone simulator use cases and identify datasets that could be used to train and test them, as well as technology challenges and gaps to address.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field.
• Knowledge of network communications, routing, and radio signaling.
• Knowledge of robotics, UAS, or autonomous software programming (e.g., PX4, ArduPilot, AirSim, MAVLink).
• Knowledge of software engineering for virtual simulation applications.
• Experience with modern AI tools and applications (AWS, GCP, Azure, MLFlow, SQL, BigQuery, Snowflake).
• Experience in development and manipulation of software code, such as Python, C, C++, Qt, JavaScript.
• Knowledge of data structures, formats, and software coding curation processes.
• Experience developing open‑source code, identifying use cases, and evaluating dataset quality and representativeness.
• Knowledge of mathematical probability and statistics, and optimization methods.
• Knowledge of machine learning, including supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, and model evaluation.
• Knowledge of dataset biases and labeling issues.
• Knowledge of translating operational needs into solvable radio‑signal or networking problems.
• US Citizens preferred.

Benefits

• Johns Hopkins offers a total rewards package that supports health, life, career and retirement. More information can be found at https://hr.jhu.edu/benefits-worklife/.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Johns Hopkins University is committed to equal opportunity for its faculty, staff, and students. The university does not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status or other legally protected characteristic. The university is committed to providing qualified individuals access to all academic and employment programs, benefits and activities on the basis of demonstrated ability, performance and merit without regard to personal factors that are irrelevant to the program involved.