Research Software Engineering Specialist

This collaborative role within the Digital Research Innovation & AI group focuses on enhancing researcher capabilities through innovative digital methods. As a Research Software Engineering Specialist, you will work directly with researchers, providing expertise to ensure the effective use of high-performance computing, data, and AI platforms and services.

You will play a crucial role in helping researchers build their research and AI capabilities, with a particular emphasis on the biological and life sciences. This position is designed to complement existing team expertise across other fields of research, by bringing an essential perspective from areas such as biological and molecular sciences, computational biology, bioinformatics, bioengineering, biochemistry, and computational chemistry.

This opportunity is fundamentally about service, enablement, and partnering with researchers.

Key responsibilities include:

• Support the development and optimisation of reproducible computational workflows (AI, GPU, HPC, cloud) for researchers.
• Coach and enable researchers to develop essential computational skills and expertise, fostering self-sufficiency in AI, GPU, and HPC platforms.
• Lead and facilitate workshops and training on research software engineering, HPC, and AI practices.
• Maintain a high understanding of science goals and emerging developments, sharing this knowledge with research communities.
• Apply deep curiosity to science and research to understand models and algorithms and provide expert guidance

Please note this is a fulltime (37.5 hours/ week) permanent opportunity, with a salary range of $115,000 - $135,000 per annum depending on skills and experience.

For more detailed information please visit the Position Description.

Mō tō mātou rōpū | About the team

Digital Services, a key division within the University, is responsible for shaping and executing the digital strategy and supporting learning, teaching, research, and administration, with a cornerstone commitment to security and ethics.

The Digital Research Innovation & AI group, part of Digital Services, focuses on capability development in digital research and AI for research. We value working in partnership with research teams, contributing our expertise and growing researcher skills in applying powerful computational tools and methods. Our group has expertise in specialist research data platforms, AI for science, high performance computing (HPC), research cloud computing, and product engineering and emerging research-led product development.

He kōrero mōu | About you

We are seeking a highly curious and collaborative individual who is passionate about supporting and enabling cutting-edge research, particularly within the biological and molecular sciences. You will thrive on understanding complex scientific problems and translating them into effective computational solutions.

You will ideally bring:

• A PhD or Master's in a computational field of science and at least 7 years of related work experience in a research-intensive environment, providing software engineering and AI support to research teams.
• Demonstrated expertise in the design, development, or implementation of computational packages, analytical pipelines, or research software platforms, including debugging and optimizing software for HPC or GPU systems.
• Advanced programming skills across scientific, statistical, and AI platforms and parallelisation frameworks, especially those based in Python, R, and Julia.
• A proven track record of effectively transferring skills and building capability within multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience in the transformative opportunities emerging from AI for science.

Candidates with international experience, those returning from industry, or research technicians in software engineering are encouraged to apply. If you don’t feel you meet all these criteria though believe you have something to offer, we encourage you to apply.