Research Software Engineer

National Institute of Standards and Technology; Gaithersburg, Northern (MD, KY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking a Research Software Engineer to support the Data Center and Business Group in building sustainable software infrastructure for Measurement Service projects. You will work as an embedded team member helping plan, code, review, and deploy software, databases, workflows, and scientific infrastructure with emphasis on reproducibility.

You will collaborate with researchers to adopt modern git-based workflows, contribute to

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in software or STEM fields.
• Proficiency with server-side runtimes (Node.js, PHP) and MongoDB.
• Experience with Git, API integration, responsive design, and testing.
• Familiarity with Linux file systems and programming.
• Experience building data pipelines and reproducible workflows.
• Ability to document for scientists and developers; create tutorials or API docs.
• Experience collaborating with researchers in modern software workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, expand, and deploy a scientific database layout for active research and internal datasets.
• Develop, refactor, profile, test, and package prototype code for long-term sustainability and performance.
• Create user-friendly features for data input forms and data display on the reference material dataset site.
• Develop features to store, retrieve, and manage data and files related to data records.

Skills

Collaborative research workflows

Documentation for scientific users

Automated testing

Code review

Reproducible workflows

Education

Bachelor’s degree in software engineering, CS, IT or STEM

Tools

Node.js

PHP

MongoDB

Git

APIs

CI/CD

Linux

Job description

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST recognizes that its research staff may want to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest and, therefore, requires those institutions to be recipients of a PREP award. The PREP program involves staff from a wide range of backgrounds conducting scientific research across various fields. Individuals in this position will perform technical work supporting the collaboration's scientific research.

The work will entail

The Data Center and Business Group (DCB) in the NIST Material Measurement Laboratory is seeking a Research Software Engineer (RSE) to help build sustainable software infrastructure for Measurement Service related projects. The successful candidate will provide both hands-on support for the development, maintenance, deployment, and long-term sustainability of critical software, databases, workflows, and scientific infrastructure.

In this role you will work as an embedded technical team member, participating in project planning, code creation and revision, code review, architecture discussions, reproducibility efforts, and deployment decisions. The successful candidate will help prioritize coding work across projects in consultation with DCB programmers, balancing near-term needs with long-term software sustainability.

Duties

• Design, expand, and deploy to an existing scientific database layout supporting active research and internal NIST datasets.
• Develop, refactor, profile, test, and package prototype code for long-term maintainability and performance.
• Develop new user-friendly intuitive features based around data input forms and display of data for an existing reference material dataset website.
• Develop features to store, retrieve, and manage files related to the data records.

Required Skills, Expertise, and Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in software engineering, computer science, information technology, a STEM field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Proficiency in Server-side languages or runtimes (Node.js and PHP), alongside database management (MongoDB).
• Proficiency in version control systems like Git, API integration, responsive design, and debugging/testing procedures.
• Proficiency in Linux based file system and programming.
• Experience building data pipelines and reproducible workflows.
• Library and API design and release management, documentation for scientific users and developers, automated testing and continuous integration, code review and maintainability practices.
• The ability to work alongside researchers in adopting modern, collaborative software development workflows (e.g., git-based collaboration, issue tracking, lightweight project management).
• Experience creating tutorials, examples, API documentation, or other user-facing materials for scientific software.

An Associate at NIST is not a federal employee but collaborates with NIST on research projects of mutual interest and does not work exclusively on NIST mission-related activities. If you have any questions, please contact the International and Academic Affairs Office at [e-mail] .