Research Software Engineer I/II

Job Description:

UF Information Technology (UFIT) is seeking an intermediate-level Research Software Engineer to join Research Computing, a unit within UFIT. The applicant is expected to work at locations across the campus to work closely with faculty and their research teams on software engineering in computational, data processing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects in research and education. The final applicant will be considered at the level for which they qualify.

Employment with UFIT provides an excellent opportunity to work with other employees dedicated and focused on understanding and interpreting the technological needs of the University of Florida’s innovative and inspirational community. This position is in Gainesville, FL with flexible work arrangements possible. It is not a remote position.

UF has been operating HiPerGator, for close to a decade. It is the fastest supercomputer owned and operated by a university in the USA. HiPerGator has become a critical service for UF because of the growth of the community of researchers, faculty, students and collaborators that UF Research Computing serves not only in size but also in the breadth of research domains. The workloads running on HiPerGator cover a wide range of research disciplines, from physical science and engineering to medicine and drug discovery, as well as business, law, arts and humanities. The demand for HiPerGator’s computing power to carry out research in foundational and use-inspired AI has also dramatically increased with UF’s AI Initiative and the recent success of generative AI such as ChatGPT in all aspects of human activity.

The University of Florida is seeking people who are looking for an exciting career supporting the research performed by world-class faculty and their students and collaborators in their quest to solve the most challenging problems facing the world today. The people in these positions are part of a collaborative team that values innovative ideas and viewpoints, and they will be expected to work closely in faculty-led teams in software engineering projects. This position will involve constant learning and professional development. If you think this environment is a match for you or an exciting challenge, you are encouraged to use the cover letter to explain why you are a good fit.

Some key responsibilities of this position are:

• Learn by independent study, reading textbooks and research papers, and online training materials about problem domains in which work is needed.
• Design, program, document, debug, test, deploy, and maintain software for specific projects in diverse scientific and scholarly domains.
• Follow best practices for software engineering and data science, including cybersecurity.
• Often, software to be developed will be open source, new or a contribution to an existing tool, library, or framework.
• Act as a consultant and mentor on software engineering principles for the project team you are part of for a given project.
• Contribute to papers and documentation to be produced as deliverables of the assigned project.
• Optimize code for performance and maintainability.
• Keep updated on new developments in software engineering techniques and tools that could improve research outcomes.

Professional development opportunities:

• Learning the underlying science for the software you are developing with the project team.
• Access a community of professionals who are committed to operating excellent research computing support.
• Take training through various options ranging from workshops and online training certificates to semester-long courses and degrees.

Qualifications

• A Bachelor/Master’s degree in computer science, engineering, sciences, or a related computational field is required.
• Solid coding skills and good experience with advanced programming languages like C/C++, Python, Fortran, Scala.
• Familiarity with high-performance computing (HPC) systems, including GPUs, and programming, such as using CUDA, MPI, AI/ML/DL, and advanced debuggers and performance analyzers.
• Familiarity with working on open-source projects.

About UF Information Technology

Led by Senior Vice President and CIO Elias Eldayrie, the nine departments comprising UFIT are: Academic Technology; AI²; Applications, Development, and Integrations; Business Center; Customer Experience and Resource Planning; Data Platform and Analytics; Information Security Office; Infrastructure and Communication Technology; and Research Computing. UF Information Technology (UFIT) enables teaching, learning, research, and service on campus and across the region with state-of-the-art enterprise IT systems, including SEC and SUS universities, and the opportunity to teach using HiPerGator. For more information about UFIT and its goals and governance, visit .

About the University of Florida

One of America’s all-around best universities, the drives future-making education, eye-opening discoveries, life-saving health care, and community-building collaboration for our state, our nation, and our world. UF is in Gainesville, a city of approximately , residents in North-Central Florida, miles from Florida’s West Coast, miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and within a 2-hour drive to large metropolitan areas (Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville). The beautiful climate and extensive nearby parks and recreational areas afford year-round outdoor activities, including hiking, biking, and nature photography. UF’s large college sports programs, museums, and performing arts center support various activities and cultural events for residents to enjoy. Learn more about what Gainesville has to offer at

Exceptional Benefits

UF provides various programs based on an employee’s salary plan, including vacation, sick leave, holidays, personal leave days, and paid family leave. In addition to paid time off, the University of Florida offers a very competitive package.

Expected Salary:

RSE I: $,-$,; commensurate based on education and experience.

RSE II: $,-$,; commensurate based on education and experience.

Required Qualifications:

RSE Level I: A Bachelor’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and two years of experience; Master’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field.

RSE Level II: A Bachelor’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and three years of experience; Master’s Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and one year of experience; Doctoral Degree in computer or physical science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field.

Applicants will be considered at the level for which they qualify. Appropriate college coursework or vocational/technical training may substitute at an equivalent rate for the required experience but does not negate the minimum degree requirement(s).

Preferred:

The ideal candidate will possess the following education, experience, and skills:

• AI frameworks, such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, etc
• Building digital twins using NVIDIA Omniverse, one or more digital content creation softwares, such as Unreal, Maya, etc.
• Physics-based modeling using chemistry or materials codes, weather simulations, etc.
• Statistical modeling and data visualization
• Parallel software design with MPI, OpenMP, pthreads, or CUDA
• GPU computing environment
• Deep Learning, image processing, natural language processing, generative AI, and large AI models
• For level I, applicants must have at least 1 year of software engineering experience
• For level II, applicants must have at least 2 years of software engineering experience