Postdoctoral Research Associate - Research Software & Research Computing Facilitation

Title: Postdoctoral Research Associate - Research Software & Research Computing Facilitation

Executive Area: Academic Affairs

College/School/MBU: College of Information & Computer Sciences

Department: Computer Science

Work Location: Amherst

Schedule: Full Time

Work Arrangement: Onsite

Job Summary

Research Computing & Data (RCD) in collaboration with the Center for Data Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) is hiring a Research Fellow in research software engineering facilitation. UMass is a fast growing research computing leader in New England and this unique role provides ample opportunity to impact research computing both regionally and nationally. UMass Amherst's primary research computing resource is the Unity Research Computing Platform, a collaborative cluster led by the University of Massachusetts and the University of Rhode Island with numerous partner schools in the New England region. Unity is housed at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a joint datacenter which hosts research computing systems from UMass, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Boston University, and Yale, as well as a variety of other universities and colleges in partnership with one of the main datacenter sponsors.

We are looking for early-career academics who are passionate about and seeking mentorship in one or more of the following:
Promoting best practices for scientific and academic software development.
Open source research software development and contributions in service to the research computing community at UMass and beyond.
Developing innovative solutions for research software development, deployment, and workflows to leverage cutting-edge and prototype HPC and AI hardware.

Interfacing with the larger research computing community through conferences, research journal participation, open source software development and contributions, and education initiatives.
Working with a high-energy team dedicated to building solutions for the next generation of research technologies and science.

Essential Functions

Under the guidance of senior Research Computing & Data staff, the Postdoctoral Research Associate will:

Provide research software engineering services and consulting for UMass Amherst and Unity researchers across subject areas. Topics include, but are not limited to, scientific software development, software development best practices, high performance computing workflow and pipeline guidance and troubleshooting, research software optimization, and data management.

Contribute to RCD's user education initiatives and strategy, including research computing documentation, workshops, short courses, and asynchronous tutorials.

Work with the RCD leadership team to help develop strategies for leveraging and contributing to open source projects to solve cyberinfrastructure software engineering problems.

With mentorship from senior Research Computing & Data staff, build career and research skills in research computing, including facilitation, software development, and/or systems design and administration.

Other Functions

Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

Ph.D. in a field with a significant research computing component.

Research or software development experience in a field with a significant research computing component.

Proficiency with Linux or Unix operating systems and command line.

Proficiency in at least one high-level programming language (e.g., Python, R, C, C++, Julia, Matlab).

Ability to work well with the RCD team and the researchers we support under the supervision of senior Research Computing & Data staff.

Strong interpersonal and communication skills, including in verbal and written technical conversations.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience contributing to scientific or academic software engineering projects or public open source projects.

Expertise in a computational field or method, including, but not limited to, scientific software engineering, numerical methods, machine learning, or parallel and distributed computing.

Experience with a parallelization method (e.g., threading, CUDA or ROCm, MPI, OpenMP).

Experience with high performance computing platforms and resource schedulers and managers (e.g., Slurm, PBS, HTCondor).

Skills in high performance computing, research computing, or computational science.

Experience with facilitation or user support.

Informal or formal teaching experience, including peer tutoring or teaching assistantship

Proficiency with version control, preferably git, and version control platforms like GitHub or GitLab.

Working Conditions

Work is performed in a standard office or indoor university environment and involves minimal physical exertion.

Work Schedule and Work Arrangement

M-F, standard working hours

Salary Information

Salary range: $70,000 - $80,000.

Special Instructions for Applicants

Along with the application, please submit your CV, a cover letter, and the names and contact information for three (3) professional references.

This position will remain open for the time period required by any applicable collective bargaining agreement and will continue until a suitable candidate pool is identified. Interested applicants are strongly encouraged to apply early.