Research Software Engineer

Job Description

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is a world-leading centre for research and postgraduate education in public and global health. Our mission is to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide; working in partnership to achieve excellence in public and global health research, education, and translation of knowledge into policy and practice.

The post will be based at The Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia (the Unit), a faculty of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. 

The post-holder will contribute to the development of free, open-source software for outbreak analysis, to support national and international epidemic preparedness and response.

Responsibilities

The role will be part of the major new ‘Epiverse’ initiative at LSHTM, a joint collaboration between researchers in London and The Gambia supported by data.org, which builds on previous analysis for outbreaks such as COVID-19 and Ebola within our Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases (CMMID), and analytics development programmes such as the R Epidemics Consortium and EpiForecasts. The post-holder will contribute to the development of free, open-source software for outbreak analysis, to support national and international epidemic preparedness and response. The role will focus on developing software to allow users to compare policy choices using transmission models. Software will be developed in R, and the post-holder will need to implement modern good practices including the use of version control systems, automatic/unit testing, code coverage assessment, and the use of continuous integration services. Training can be provided to candidates if needed. Beyond contributions to code, documentation, testing, code reviews, and training, the post holder integrate their work into the wider project ecosystem and build on the existing code base. They will be responsible for implementing the general software engineering vision and strategies outlined by the project’s leadership, and for releasing and maintaining software packages. The project is run using Lean and Agile frameworks as needed, and experience would be beneficial but not necessary. It is required that the post-holder agrees to the project code of conduct. The postholder will be based in Gambia, but work closely with Dr Rosalind Eggo and the team at LSHTM (London), so experience with remote work is a benefit, as is the capacity to travel to the UK.

Educational Requirements

• MSc degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline (computer science, engineering, data science, statistics, a natural science, etc).

• Excellent programming skills in at least one commonly used programming language (R, python, Julia etc.)

Experience Requirements

• Experience developing software projects involving multiple developers, automated testing, and continuous integration/delivery

• Experience making major contributions to software development teams working on projects with high impact applications.

• Experience in using and developing research software to produce research outputs

• Knowledge of and commitment to using best practices in software development, including documentation, issue tracking, unit testing, and version control

• An understanding of the importance of good practices for producing reliable software and reproducible analyses (e.g., version control, issue tracking, automated testing, package management, literate programming tools such as Jupyter and Rmarkdown)

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience in the visual representation of quantitative data, documentation of software packages or data resources, the authoring of research papers or technical reports, and giving presentations or classes on technical subjects.

• Experience contributing to open source communities.

• Experience coordinating open-source development projects involving internal and external contributors

• Experience contributing to securing external funding for software projects or programmes

Additional Requirements

• Proven ability to develop and maintain working relationships and actively collaborate with other technical and non-technical staff, teams and groups

• Ability to rapidly learn and adapt to new technologies and quantitative concepts

• Excellent organisational skills and proven project management skills

• Proven project leadership skills

• An ability to write and maintain modular, maintainable and testable code

• Demonstrable interest in infectious disease epidemiology

• Reflects LSHTM’s MRCG EDI goals in their work and behaviour.

• Willingness to travel overseas for meetings and events