Senior Research Software Engineer – Breakthrough Listen

Overview

In this role you will contribute to Breakthrough Listen by delivering robust software for large-scale astronomy data and pipelines. You join a growing Oxford-based RSE group, collaborating with researchers to create maintainable software and share best practices. You will lead development efforts on high-impact projects, with opportunities to train others and advance your technical and project management skills. The position blends research, software engineering, and consultancy within a world-leading university setting.

Responsibilities

• Lead and contribute to software development for the Breakthrough Listen project over an initial two-year period
• Design, implement, and maintain reliable software solutions for large-scale astronomical data and pipelines
• Collaborate with researchers to ensure reproducible research and high-quality software practices
• Deliver workshops and training on software development best practices
• Potentially manage projects and supervise other RSEs
• Adapt to a variety of research projects across Physics and related domains after the initial period

Key requirements

• Doctoral degree with significant software development component or substantial research software engineering experience
• Strong programming in Python and web frameworks (notably Django)
• Experience with REST API development, Linux and shell scripting
• Proven ability to deploy and manage large relational databases
• Experience with containers, orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), and distributed systems
• Familiarity with high-performance computing and job schedulers (e.g., Slurm)
• Ability to rapidly learn new languages, libraries, and technologies
• Collaboration with researchers to design reliable software solutions

• collaboration
• communication
• training and mentoring
• Python
• Django
• REST API

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