Research Software Engineer

Department
The University of York has established the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology which formally launched on 1 August 2022. We bring physicists and engineers together to push the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation and meet the grand challenges facing society. Our aim is to develop new technologies that work for the public good, in an environment where everyone can thrive.

As a School, equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our culture and we strive to provide a working environment which allows all staff and students to contribute fully, to flourish, and to excel. We aim to ensure that there is a supportive and egalitarian culture at all levels and across all staff groups and offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We aim to inspire young people to engage with science and engineering through our outreach work.

We are now looking for two (2) individuals to join a collaborative team of Research Software Engineers (RSEs) and computational scientists led by Dr Phil Hasnip, in the Condensed Matter Dynamics group. The team develops a variety of research software to help scientists in the UK and across the globe, many of whom are experimentalists who use research software to interpret their data and guide future experimental design.

Role
You will bring modern software development practice to computational science, to improve its usability, sustainability, efficiency and reliability. You will conduct research and create scientific software for use by non-computational specialists, who need to be able to understand and trust simulation results, without the need for detailed knowledge of the inner computational methods. The successful candidates will support work on the PAX-HPC (Particles At eXascale on High-Performance Computing) project, part of the UK’s ExCALIBUR exascale readiness programme. At York the team will focus on the CASTEP first-principles materials modelling program (www.castep.org), which uses quantum mechanics to predict the chemical, electronic and physical properties of matter. There will be many other opportunities to collaborate across the PAX-HPC partners, for example STFC (the CRYSTAL first-principles program), Durham and Manchester (the SWIFT code for cosmological simulations).

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed
You will have:

• First degree and a Masters-level degree (or higher) in a STEM discipline (a PhD in a computational STEM discipline is desirable).
• Considerable experience in developing HPC software.
• Knowledge of research software engineering, a range of research techniques and methodologies and parallel computing methodologies.
• Experience developing or optimising computational methods for research software.
• Highly developed communication skills and the ability to write up research work for publication.
• The ability to conduct individual and collaborative research and develop research objectives, projects and proposals.
• Knowledge of GPU programming models, materials modelling theory and its implementation in software and methods for “first-principles” materials modelling software are all desirable.

Interview date: TBC

For informal enquiries: please contact Phil Hasnip on phil.hasnip@york.ac.uk or the PET HR team on pet-hr@york.ac.uk.

The University strives to be diverse and inclusive – a place where we can ALL be ourselves.

We particularly encourage applications from people who identify as Black, Asian or from a Minority Ethnic background, who are underrepresented at the University.

We offer family friendly, flexible working arrangements, with forums and inclusive facilities to support our staff. #EqualityatYork

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