Research Software Engineer - Instrumentation & Data Pipelines

Subsense; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Subsense, a Palo Alto-based deep-tech company, is seeking a Research Software Engineer, Scientific Instrumentation to connect experimental hardware with software for instrument control and data handling. You will work directly with scientists and engineers to translate complex workflows into reliable, intuitive software for acquisition, real-time visualization, and data storage.

This hands-on role sits at the intersection of software, hardware, and data science, offering ownership over

Qualifications

• 3+ years of relevant professional or equivalent experience.
• Strong Python software engineering skills for production or research software.
• Experience building desktop applications or interfaces for scientific users (PyQt/PySide, Qt).
• Hands-on experience interfacing software with scientific instruments and DAQ hardware.
• Experience designing parallel acquisition, processing, visualization, or instrument-control software.
• Experience with scientific data formats such as Zarr or HDF5.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain Python interfaces for lab equipment and scientific instruments using ScopeFoundry or similar frameworks.
• Develop applications for instrument control, data acquisition, real-time visualization, recording, and monitoring.
• Design reliable, high-throughput acquisition across multiple instruments and data streams.
• Create data ingestion and conversion pipelines ensuring consistency between raw data and metadata.
• Collaborate with scientists to turn workflows into robust, usable software.
• Maintain and improve existing lab software and standardize instrument interfaces, acquisition, logging, and storage.
• Troubleshoot hardware/software integration issues in the lab with scientists and hardware engineers.

Skills

Python

PyQt/PySide

Instrument control

DAQ interfaces

Parallel acquisition

C++

Data visualization

Software development

Team collaboration

HDF5/Zarr

Education

BS in CS/CE/EE

Tools

ScopeFoundry

PyVISA

Qt/PyQt

PostgreSQL

HDF5

Job description

Subsense, a Palo Alto-based deep-tech company, is seeking a Research Software Engineer, Scientific Instrumentation to connect experimental hardware with software for instrument control and data handling. You will work directly with scientists and engineers to translate complex workflows into reliable, intuitive software for acquisition, real-time visualization, and data storage.

This hands-on role sits at the intersection of software, hardware, and data science, offering ownership over