Machine Learning Senior Software Developer

Hours: Full time or Part time (minimum 28 hours per week)

Benefits: 30 days holiday + 8 bank holidays + 2.5 privilege days + exceptional average salary pension + Christmas shut down + excellent work life balance

Contract Type: Fixed Term 36 months  

Location: Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford / Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington

We have a great opportunity for a Senior Software Developer to join the Scientific Computing Department (SCD) of STFC-UKRI and develop new applications of machine learning at the collaborate with materials science. Researchers from universities and from industry use STFC-UKRI for a very wide range of scientific applications ranging from revealing ancient fossils and improving battery technology, to characterising materials, to understanding the impact of climate change. In this position, you will have the opportunity to co-design and deliver innovating work alongside leading researchers at the forefront of machine learning and modelling. 

About the role 

The post sits within the recently EPSRC-funded Goldilocks project [1], with an initial period of 36 months with the possibility of extension based on mutual agreement. 

Goldilocks aims to develop, validate and disseminate large language models to help researchers to prepare optimal input files for various electronic structure computational tasks, reducing the time needed to get meaningful simulations running and hence reducing the human and computational time overheads as well as energy cost of computational materials science research. The project is a collaboration between the Computational Materials and Molecular Science and SciML Themes at the Scientific Computing Department. 

A central tenet of the initiative is knowledge exchange and collaborative, open-source software development. You will attend regular meetings with the other researchers and software engineers within STFC and UK universities and present your work at large community meetings as well as national and international conferences. The successful applicant will be applying and developing novel, state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and data analysis techniques to analyse Density Functional Theory input and outputs for a variety of materials classes and simulation types with the view of advancing their accuracy, reproducibility and sustainability in the longer term. You will also interact with other related and relevant initiatives active at SCD, starting but not limited to CoSeC (https://www.scd.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/CoSeC.aspx), the Ada Lovelace Centre (ALC (https://adalovelacecentre.ac.uk/)), and the Physical Science Database Infrastructure (PSDI (https://www.psdi.ac.uk/))

We are looking for people with: 

• A PhD (or equivalent experience) in machine learning 
• Experience in machine learning or Bayesian methods. Including an experience in using one or more machine learning frameworks, especially related to large language models and their fine tuning. 
• Evidence of modern software engineering experience & experience in using high performance or Al computing systems 
• Solid knowledge of Python 
• Awareness of software engineering principles, with regard to robustness, portability, and usability. 
• Experience with using and developing open source machine learning frameworks, e.g pytorch 
• Working knowledge of database technologies is an advantage 
• Evidence of teamwork experience, good written communication skills as exemplified by technical reports, peer reviewed papers and/or similar material (e.g. a dissertation as part of a postgraduate degree) 
• Within the selection processes, you will also be asked to provide a relevant sample of code that you have written. 

The Scientific Computing Department of STFC has an excellent track record in high end computing, scientific software development and related research. The group has access to a number of STFC HPC platforms, as well as access to the ARCHER2 national supercomputer and some Tier 2 HPC centres. 

For informal enquiries about the positions, please contact Alin Marin Elena, alin-marin.elena@stfc.ac.uk, Gilberto Teobaldi gilberto.teobaldi@stfc.ac.uk and Juan Bicarregui juan.bicarregui@stfc.ac.uk 

Employee Benefits

• We are offering a fixed term position with a whole host of benefits including:
• 30 days holiday (in addition to 10.5 bank holidays, Christmas shut down and privilege days).
• Flexible working hours.
• An excellent average salary pension scheme.
• Employee shopping/travel discounts.

We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are invested in creating an environment that is welcoming and supportive of all, to help us achieve the highest possible standards in our work and organisation together. In this regard, we encourage applications from under-represented groups.

We ask some of the biggest questions in the universe, to answer some of the biggest challenges in the world. Together, our scientists, technologists, engineers and business support team explore the unknown across every field you could think of. 

What could you achieve with the world-leading facilities and experts of one of Europe's largest research organisations by your side? Join us and discover what’s possible.