Data Scientist

Rice University; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 95,000 - 116,000; Full time

Job summary

Rice University invites applications for a remote Data Engineer role focused on building and operating a READINESS central data lake with an S3-compatible store, metadata, and access control.

You'll develop ingestion pipelines from synthesis tools and instruments, design metadata schemas, and deliver APIs for researchers and AI teams, while ensuring data provenance, security, and reliability across multi-institution environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• 3+ years of related professional experience in data engineering, data science, software engineering, or research computing.

Responsibilities

• Designs, deploys, and operates the READINESS central data lake, including the S3-compatible object store, bucket layout, versioning, and access policies.
• Develops and maintains ingestion connectors that capture data unattended from synthesis tools, characterization instruments, and robotic systems, landing it with metadata and provenance links.
• Designs and maintains the project's metadata and provenance schema and the Python client library used by project teams.
• Deploys and administers the SQL query layer (Trino and Hive Metastore over Parquet) and programmatic APIs for researchers and AI teams.
• Builds embedding pipelines and vector indexes over images, spectra, and logs; exposes similarity search and RAG services.

Skills

SQL proficiency

Relational data modeling

Data engineering

Python

LLM integration

Security and access control

Git

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/DS/Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Object storage (S3)

Trino/Presto

PyTorch

Vector databases

OAuth/SAML/OIDC

ROS/rosbag

Job description

Ideal Candidate Statement

The ideal candidate is a skilled software or data engineer who enjoys collaborating across disciplines and brings experience designing data models and developing reliable systems to capture, organize, and serve complex data. Equally comfortable deploying storage infrastructure, troubleshooting connections to physical instruments, training embedding models, and integrating LLM agents with databases, this individual has experience developing and deploying data systems that others rely on. An appreciation for the challenges and opportunities presented by diverse, real-world data generated by scientific equipment is essential, along with careful attention to system reliability, documentation, and data integrity. Self-directed and pragmatic, they can translate a project goal into a working technical solution, selecting appropriate tools and collaborating with the researchers who operate the instruments to ensure data is captured accurately and consistently with the necessary metadata. They communicate effectively with colleagues from different technical backgrounds and understand the importance of security, provenance, and access control in a multi-institutional research environment.

Workplace Requirements

This position is fully remote, permitting all tasks to be completed from any location within the United States. Working hours will remain central standard time. Per Rice policy 440, work arrangements may be subject to change.

Hiring Range

Up to $105,000 annually.

Additional Employment Details

This is a one-year term limited, benefits-eligible position funded by a grant, soft and/or restricted funds, and may be renewed based on continued funding availability, research needs, and performance.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• Three or more (3+) years of related professional experience in data engineering, data science, software engineering, or research computing.

Skills

• Strong programming skills and ability to write production-quality, tested, documented code.
• Proficiency with SQL and relational data modeling, including scientific or operational database schemas.
• Experience with object storage (S3, Ceph, or MinIO), columnar formats (Parquet), and distributed query engines (Trino, Presto, Spark, or similar).
• Working knowledge of Linux administration, containers (Docker/Kubernetes), and at least one major cloud platform (AWS or Azure).
• Familiarity with PyTorch, embedding models, vector databases, and retrieval-augmented or agentic LLM applications.
• Understanding of authentication and access controls (SSO/SAML/OIDC, role-based access, audit logging) and secure research-data handling.
• Ability to connect software to physical instruments and devices using network or file-based protocols; ROS/rosbag experience is a plus.
• Ability to learn an unfamiliar scientific domain, translate collaborators' requirements into working systems, manage competing requests, and communicate clearly.

Preferences

• Five or more years of professional experience building and operating data systems.
• Experience building data pipelines for scientific instruments, laboratory automation, manufacturing, or IoT/telemetry.
• Experience operating Ceph or comparable software-defined storage, or managing cloud object-storage tenancies at 100 TB+ scale.
• Experience with GPU-accelerated similarity search (FAISS, Milvus, Qdrant) and serving open-weight LLMs.
• Experience in academic research or national laboratories, including working with institutional IT and security offices.
• Experience monitoring production data systems and implementing backup and recovery.

Essential Functions

• Designs, deploys, and operates the READINESS central data lake, including the S3-compatible object store (self-hosted Ceph or cloud), bucket layout, versioning, and access policies.
• Develops and maintains ingestion connectors that capture data unattended from synthesis tools, characterization instruments, and robotic systems, and land it in the store with structured, de-identified metadata and provenance links.
• Designs and maintains the project's metadata and provenance schema and the Python client library that all project teams use to read and write data.
• Deploys and administers the SQL query layer (Trino and Hive Metastore over Parquet) and programmatic APIs for researchers, the user portal, and digital-twin and AI teams.
• Builds embedding pipelines and GPU-resident vector indexes over images, spectra, and logs, and exposes similarity-search and retrieval-augmented-generation services.
• Develops and demonstrates AI agents that answer questions about experiments by retrieving from the data lake, in collaboration with the AI & Digital Twins working group.
• Implements and maintains security controls, including Rice single sign-on with MFA, tiered role-based access, encryption, and immutable audit logging, and works with Rice Information Security and Research Security on design reviews and compliance.
• Monitors system health, performs integrity checks and backups, and documents and tests recovery procedures.
• Gathers requirements from synthesis platform, characterization, and robotics teams; attends platform team and working-group meetings; and sets node-wide standards for data formats, metadata, and access.
• Writes documentation, user guides, and onboarding materials, and trains researchers and partner-site collaborators to use the data infrastructure.
• Mentors graduate and undergraduate students working on data infrastructure projects.
• Performs all other related duties as assigned.

Rice University HR | Benefits

Rice Mission and Values : Mission and Values | Rice UniversityRice University is committed to ensuring Equal Employment Opportunity and welcoming the fullness of diversity into our candidate pools. Rice considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, genetic information, disability, or protected veteran status. Rice also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified persons with disabilities. If an applicant requires a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, please get in touch with Rice University's Human Resources Office via email at for support. If you have any additional questions, please email us at . Thank you for your interest in employment with Rice University.