Research Software Engineer (10396)

The Rosalind Franklin Institute (the Franklin) is a technology institute established by the UK Government as a unique centre committed to advancing tools that are needed to transform healthcare in the future.

Our teams are aligned across a number of technology and life science challenges as part of our strategic focus, with scientists, technologists and software engineers working together in a multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment at our state‑of‑the‑art research facility at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

As a Research Software Engineer (RSE) at the Franklin, you will bring scientific research and computational skills to develop scientific software, apply artificial intelligence (AI) and data science to solve scientific challenges and develop compute and data infrastructure to accelerate scientific workloads. Through this work, you will build scientific independence, develop new science and leadership skills, and establish a growing reputation externally in the Research Software Engineering community and beyond.

A successful candidate will be working collaboratively with our research project teams to provide expert advice and assistance as they tackle challenging problems across the scientific disciplines at the Franklin. They will also work on developing centralised data and compute infrastructure including High Performance Computing (HPC), cloud and data storage/management.

The Franklin faces cutting edge technological challenges, and by leveraging software development in tandem with scientific discovery, it presents a unique and exciting environment for Research Software Engineering. We are a lean, agile and collaborative team that works on a wide variety of scientific and infrastructure projects. As an RSE in the Advanced Research Computing platform (ARC) you will be working on developing software and technology solutions to drive AI research in bioscience, implementing best practices for scientific data management, and leveraging cloud and HPC platforms to provide powerful compute capabilities to our users. In this role, your contribution will help to deliver the Franklin’s mission to drive forward technology development in the life sciences.

Key Responsibilities

As a Research Software Engineer you will:

• Develop and deploy bespoke scientific software, collaborating with scientists across the Franklin, and making the best use of our existing data infrastructure. This can include web applications, APIs, machine learning tools, and image processing pipelines.
• Utilise good software development practices such as CI/CD, writing tests, documentation, and using installers where appropriate.
• Requirements gathering; being able to convert discussions with scientists into a software development specific and implementation plan.
• Create and maintain a comprehensive and up to date best practice documentation for all members of the Franklin.
• Provide user support and service management (e.g. training, writing documentation).
• Learn to develop and maintain the Franklin’s Cloud/HPC/Data infrastructure.
• Plan and conduct experiments, analyse and interpret results and supervised delivery of outputs (e.g. research report, patent application) in Research Software Engineering, HPC, Cloud or Research Data Management.
• Work within a project team, contributing to wider projects around Franklin's key Challenges.
• Lead major contributions to outputs from research including papers, patents and both internal and external presentations.
• Support and develop others including day-to-day supervision of students or visitors in areas related to own research.
• Have supervised, staged progression to first stages of scientific independence with opportunities to further develop science and skills/experience.
• Enhance your research through collaboration with other researchers and make active contributions to exchanging of ideas through your own network.
• Be able to understand, interpret, create and communicate appropriately within a research context.
• Develop search and discovery skills and techniques.
• Be supervised by a Senior RSE in delivery of research outputs, either in the context of a project or Challenge or as an early career development fellow.

Whilst the role requires candidates to hold either a PhD/DPhil or equivalent work experience in a scientific, research or technical setting, we may consider candidates who have submitted their PhD/DPhil thesis, in which case the initial appointment will be made at £37,500 per annum (to be increased on completion of the PhD/DPhil qualification).

In return we offer

• 25 days holidays plus bank holidays and Christmas holiday shutdown
• Generous pension scheme (employer’s contribution currently up to 18%)
• Group Life Assurance (also known as Group Life Insurance or Death in Service)
• Buying and Selling Annual Leave
• Workplace Nursery Salary Sacrifice Scheme
• Hub building with state‑of‑the‑art laboratories
• Hybrid and flexible working
• Training and development opportunities for staff at all levels
• Bus pass discount scheme and good transport links to Oxford and surrounding areas
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Access to employee discount platform (Perkbox)
• Occupational Health and wellbeing support including Employee Assistance (24/7 support and counselling)
• Health Cash Plan
• Subsidised canteen and food outlets on campus
• Free on-site parking
• Campus location in beautiful countryside with social and sports clubs open to staff

We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where every applicant has an equal opportunity to showcase their talents and abilities. This includes making adjustments for candidates with specific needs.

Both our work and our institution are better for a diverse team, who have a wide range of experiences, skills and knowledge to push forward the innovative work the institution delivers.

For further information, view our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy.

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