Research Software Engineer — Data Pipelines & HPC

Boston University; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering at Boston University seeks a Software Engineer to translate complex models into reliable software, build data pipelines, and maintain reproducible code for lab research.

You will collaborate with postdocs and researchers, containerize apps with Docker or Singularity, work on HPC workflows with Slurm, and contribute to open‑source projects, testing, and CI/CD practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Bioinformatics, or related quantitative discipline.
• 3–5 years of professional software engineering experience, or an equivalent mix of graduate-level research and development.
• Proficiency in languages common to research (Python, R, C++, or Julia).
• Strong expertise with Git, GitHub/GitLab workflows, and writing automated tests.
• Experience working in Linux/Unix environments and writing shell scripts.
• Familiarity with containerization tools like Docker or Singularity.

Responsibilities

• Translate complex mathematical models, scientific algorithms, and raw scripts into clean, modular, and well-documented software packages.
• Develop and maintain data processing pipelines, user interfaces, or visualization dashboards for lab datasets.
• Containerize applications to ensure identical execution environments across local machines, HPC clusters, or cloud platforms; manage large-scale datasets with secure storage and version control.
• Partner with lab researchers to understand computational roadblocks and engineer tooling to automate workflows; optimize code for performance, speed, and memory usage.
• Package and document software to open-source standards, enabling replication of lab findings; implement CI/CD and automated testing.

Skills

Python

R

C++

Julia

Git

GitHub/GitLab

Linux/Unix

Shell scripting

Automated testing

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Data Science/Bioinformatics

Tools

Docker

Singularity

Slurm

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering at Boston University seeks a Software Engineer to translate complex models into reliable software, build data pipelines, and maintain reproducible code for lab research.

You will collaborate with postdocs and researchers, containerize apps with Docker or Singularity, work on HPC workflows with Slurm, and contribute to open‑source projects, testing, and CI/CD practices.