[Job] London: Imperial College, RA (Software Engineer), £36.9-49.2k, clos 10 August 2022

Date posted: 5 August 2022

Imperial College
Research Assistant / Associate (Software Engineer)
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/description/ENG02217/research-assistant-associate-software-engineer
Salary £36,694* – £49,210 plus benefits

Permanent copy of the job description: JD – RSE RA – Imperial College July 2022

**Candidates close to completion of their PhD will be initially appointed as a Research Assistant within the salary range £36,694 – £39,888 per annum.

While machine-leaning enabled systems have witnessed huge advances in recent years, concerns surrounding their adequacy and safety have also grown, for instance in the context of high-risk, decision making. The inclusion of human agents in their design (to provide oversight and control) has been often considered as a reasonable solution for overcoming such concerns. However, ensuring the safe design for human-in-the-loop machine-leaning…
Job listing information

Reference ENG02217
Date posted 15 July 2022
Closing date 10 August 2022

Job description

Job summary

While machine-leaning enabled systems have witnessed huge advances in recent years, concerns surrounding their adequacy and safety have also grown, for instance in the context of high-risk, decision making. The inclusion of human agents in their design (to provide oversight and control) has been often considered as a reasonable solution for overcoming such concerns. However, ensuring the safe design for human-in-the-loop machine-leaning enabled systems remains an open challenge that requires rigorous integration of methods from software engineering, machine learning and human-computer interaction.

We are seeking a research software engineer to support the design and development of a human-in-the-loop machine-leaning enabled systems for deployment in the Policing domain. The post-holder will be part of a multidisciplinary team investigating ML-enabled systems for tackling online child sex offending. The post-holder will thus have the opportunity to develop her/his expertise on dissemination of research through interactions with other researchers in Forensic Psychology and Linguistics, and with end-users.

The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary team of academics and researchers from Aston University, University of Bath, University of Birmingham and Imperial College London.

Imperial College London is a world-class university with a mission to benefit society through excellence in science, engineering, medicine and business.  According to recent REF 2021, the College ranked top in the UK overall – with a greater proportion of 4* “world-leading” research than any other UK university. Imperial ranked first in the UK for research outputs, first in the UK for research environment, and first for research impact among Russell Group universities.  With the highest research grant income of any UK university, Imperial also has a long and successful track-record of technology development and commercialization.

The Department of Computing at Imperial College London is a leading department of Computer Science among UK Universities. The department has achieved top results in each of the research assessment exercises undertaken by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. There are over fifty academic staff members actively involved in research, creating a lively and stimulating atmosphere. The department is located in central London, next to Hyde Park and the museums of South Kensington.

Duties and responsibilities

• • To develop software solutions fit for non-expert use.

• • To work with the team and crime analyst end-users towards a safe, trusted and regulatory-compliant maintainable software solution.

• • Identify and capture user requirements and deliver solutions to ensure they are met

• • Re-use existing knowledge and software to address novel research challenges, building prototypes where appropriate

• • Collaboratively select appropriate technology and design systems for reliability and maintainability

• • Employ best-practice approaches to software engineering, including testing, issue tracking and version control

• • Work closely with other developers and domain experts

• • Develop and/or deploy tools, infrastructure and approaches for natural language processing and machine learning

• • Develop for web-based platforms using the most relevant tools and languages e.g., JSON, XML, java-script

• • Write and maintain documentation to support ongoing use and development of the software
  • Maintain highly organised and accurate record of experimental work

The post-holder will liaise closely with stakeholders and researchers to understand their requirements before working with them and other members of the team to guide the design and implement appropriate solutions. She/he will be expected to take responsibility for their own work and routinely make technical decisions.

Essential requirements

• • At Research Assistant Level – Undergraduate degree (or equivalent) or Masters degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject

• • At Research Associate Level – A PhD (or equivalent experience) in a relevant area

• • Experience of analyzing, researching and solving complex programming problems

• • Demonstrable knowledge of languages commonly used for research computing: Python and R or MATLAB

• • Demonstrable knowledge of and development experience for cloud computing platforms including AWS.

• • Full-cycle software development, including design, implementation and deployment

• • Significant involvement in a least one substantial software project using relevant technologies

• • Knowledge of best-practice techniques for software development including testing, build automation and continuous deployment, and the use of containers.