Research Computing Teams #130, 15 July 2022
Hi!
I want to write one more thing about strategy this week before going back into the basics of managing our research computing teams.
It turns out I’m still a bit discouraged by one section of the recent (very good!) PEARC21 report on strategic planning for RCD groups. That part described all too clearly the confusion and helplessness many team leaders of teams like ours feel when asked to do some positioning and strategy work. Like so many things, we’re thrust into responsibility for these kind of activities without ever being taught anything about them. It’s intimidating. But it shouldn’t be, and doesn’t have to be, that way.
The thing is, finding a path forward for a team or organization is a research and problem-solving exercise.
There's an outcome the team wants to achieve, and some problems are preventing it from achieving that outcome. First one has to research the problems and the current condition, and figure out how to make use of what’s available. Then one chooses a solvable problem, and comes up with an implementable solution that gets one from the current point, through the problem, closer to the outcome.
We are people of science. Whether we trained in science or not, we work daily now to support science, and solve complex problems. We are good at researching situations and coming up with creative solutions to problems.
But when the discussion turns to “strategic planning”, all the needless puffery surrounding the topic drains us of our confidence and dulls our instincts. There’s these important-seeming words with shifting meaning: strategy, objectives, tactics, pillars, goals. It’s disconcerting. Is this something I should already know? When does something stop being a strategy and start being a tactic? Wait, that’s a goal, I though you said it was an objective? Do I even belong in these conversations?
None of that matters. Words are tools to aid us. The purpose of that jargon is to help us by providing a shared mental model. If they’re not helping – and in many RCD planning conversations they are an active hinderance – then set them aside. Revisit them later, if you want. Those words aren’t what’s important. What’s important is the collaborative problem solving exercise.
Focusing on words instead of problems, form instead of function, leads to superficial discussions with forgettable results. It leads people to search for things that seem like would help, but don’t, like templates for strategy documents. Documents describing future directions are statements of a chosen problem and a proposed solution. There’s no “problem and solution template”. Solutions to problems aren’t uncovered by filling in the blanks on a .docx file downloaded from a website. Any such template constrains thinking rather than amplifying it.
Three sentences on the back of a napkin that actually help a team understand more clearly what it should be doing are worth infinitely more than ten pages of glossy fluff with the “right” section headings. The only purpose of a plan is to provide clarity for you and your community. It’s completely irrelevant whether someone outside that community thinks your document looks “official” or “sophisticated” or “strategic” or something. The goal is to have a final write up that makes you think, with some genuine enthusiasm, “Yes! This is the way forward, this solves a real problem for us”. Focussing on what an important document “should” look like leads to official-looking but wasted paper.
Creating clarity about a future that involves many people is hard. But working in science has taught us anything, it's how to solve hard problems while collaborating with others. If concerns around form and format are distracting you at all from the work at hand, ignore them. You can always add the “right” words and structure later if you like, once you've done the meaningful work, the problem-solving work. But the work is for us, not to satisfy some imagined style guide.
Anyway, I’ve talked about strategy enough in the last couple months - back to the basics next week, I promise.
Are there other topics you’d like to see? Discussions you’d like raised? Questions you have? Please email me by hitting reply or sending an email to jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org, or start a conversation on the #research-computing-and-data channel on the Rands slack.
Until then, on to the roundup!
Managing Teams
Technology isn't the Hardest Part - Jonathan Dursi (me)
Earlier in this week, I had the really great opportunity thanks to some readers to attend and give a talk at the Bioinfo-Core session of ISMB2022. This is a long-running group of bioinformatics core facility leaders that meet routinely to discuss topics like emerging technologies, computational demands, managing specialized teams, funding models, and the like. The meeting and discussions were fascinating and useful.
I’m fascinated by bioinformatics core facilities because on average they are well ahead of a lot of other research computing and data teams in terms of having a product and service orientation, and thinking carefully about operational and fiscal management. They also often combine some element of research computing systems, data science and data management, and software development expertise. Honestly, I tend to think of them as a view of a possible future of RCD in general - domain-focussed, deeply immersed in the science, and cross-functional. But they also face the same problems the rest of us do.
In the session I gave a bit of a whirlwind 20 min talk on the very different balls we have to juggle managing our teams - people, processes, products, and potentialities (the future; maybe “positioning” would have been a better p-word). I claim that our scientific mindset and expertise can be a huge help in those four very different problem domains, if we apply them to how we work not just the subject matter stuff. With people, as I’ve written before, we have the advanced collaboration skills from scientific projects, and typically just need help with the basics. With processes, we know all about reproducible protocols, and just need to apply them more widely. With products, we can lean on our experience bundling work product and expertise up into digestible chunks like papers and talks; and with positioning, we just need to apply the same focus we see successful PIs have. And of course, experimentation for testing hypotheses and changes is valuable everywhere.
Process has a bad rap - Paulo André
That’s right, I said it in the talk above - in public and everything. I’m a big fan of documented processes. Not processes for their own sake, but processes that already exist but aren’t documented anywhere.
But! “Process” gets a bad rap, especially in our line of work - research institutions tend to have accumulated over time huge lists of bureaucratic processes that stifle getting work done, instead of helping by making it clearer how to do things.
André talks about how to avoid that - processes should have clear purposes, documented with the process - maybe even purposes for each step. Then it’s clear why things are the way they are, and if the situation changes, they can change too. To help that, the processes should explicitly be owned by someone - preferably in the team doing the work - so it’s clear that they can be changed. Otherwise things become too hard to change, and when they can’t change easily they get stagnant. Finally, processes shouldn’t be more prescriptive than they have to be.
Technical Leadership
You will always have more Problems than Engineers - Matt Schellhas
A reminder from Schellhas that no matter the size, level in the organization, or funding levels, there’s never enough people to do everything good and useful that could be done. That means, yes, leaders who ruthlessly prioritize are key. But it also means training team members to prioritize. Applying technical judgement to possible activities is a crucial skill for everyone, from juniors up, and the sooner they loon it the stronger they’ll be.
Working With Decision Makers
Building a Board of Fundraisers - Nonprofit Hub
“Plaque and Sack”: The art of getting rid of terrible board members while making them feel appreciated - Vu Le, Nonprofit AF
A lot of our teams, especially at Universities. have something like a “scientific advisory board”. And many of those groups are…. well, let’s be honest, kind of useless. That’s partially on us. It’s easy and comfortable to slip into a cycle of benign mutual neglect. Changing that is scary. Asking them to be more involved… well, what if, all too believably, they tell us to start doing the wrong things?
But such groups can be powerful allies. They can provide input on and validate high-level direction, reach out to their communities for us, and advocate for funding for our group whether from funders or institutions.
Those of us with those sorts of groups can learn a lot from from nonprofit leadership and how they work with their boards. Back in #61 there was an article on board reports and using those to have engagement at the level they can most help us. Here we have two articles urging us to help shape our “boards” to play a strong, constructive role in our teams - which is helpful for us and more satisfying for them.
The first is simply to emphasize fundraising when developing and maintaining the advisory board. Fundraising is very different for charities than academia, but the basic principle - board members should be advocating for funding our efforts and finding opportunities for us - is the same.
The second is that board members who have stopped being helpful contributors should be gently offboarded to make way for those who can help. (Le has a... very specific writing style).
Implicit in the two articles above are that the board should have terms and clear ways of bringing new people on and having people leave, as well as regular meetings with business to attend to. This is important; it’s way too common in our space to just hard-code a few names and then not give people anything to do. When setting up such a group, a nonprofit board is an excellent model, with (simple) bylaws, expectations, meeting schedules, and staggered terms.
Science Policy, Funding, and Research Computing & Data
Harvard Debuts New University Research Computing Organization - Oliver Peckham, HPC Wire
Peckham goes out and interviews some key people and reports the details of Harvard’s new University-wide Research Computing Organization - in #128 we only had the LinkedIn post of Scott Yockel, the head of the new office, to go by.
Hopefully we’ll see more institutions move this way and away from the fragmented teams scattered around campus. Having Harvard’s imprimatur on this kind of effort will hopefully make other institutions start thinking about it. Obviously, having Ivy League money to throw around helps get it done faster - Yockel’s org has $2.8 million in internal funds to create an integrated environment - but being cash-strapped makes it more, not less, important to bring small pieces together into a coherent whole.
Importantly, the RCO will include data management, computing systems, and software development.
Ex-Google chief’s venture aims to save neglected science software - David Matthews
A somewhat longer, more detailed, followup on Science’s initial article (#106) on what’s now the four-university “Virtual Institute of Scientific Software”, funded by Eric Schmidt’s “Schmidt Futures” foundation. Touched on is a real advantage of having a larger critical mass of expertise:
What’s more, software engineers tend to be scattered and isolated across a university. “Peer development and peer community is really important to those types of positions,” says Stone. “And that would be extraordinarily rare in academia.” To counter this, VISS centres hope to create cohesive, stable teams that can learn from one another.
Again, it would be awesome if we didn’t have to rely on patrons from the tech industry to get some stable funding for maintenance of key pieces of research software:
Meanwhile, the University of Washington has been “flooded” with requests from researchers there who say they need engineering help, says Sarah Stone, a data scientist at the university who is helping to coordinate its VISS centre.
Product Management and Working with Research Communities
Twitter thread explaining how the highly asynchronous Cosmology From Home series of conference (just finishing it’s 4th installement) is run:
- It is not intended to be a replacement for in-person conferences
- Prerecorded talks, of a given length but any format, are distributed ahead of times
- Dedicated slack channel per talk with the speakers monitoring
- Talks can be advertised at any time for a more synchronous watching experience for those who want it
- Emphasis is on discussion, including suggested themes
I’m really looking forward to a future where there’s a variety of well established conference formats, synchronous and asynchronous, in-person and remote, that conference and workshop organizers can pick-and-choose from to achieve particular ends.
Fun paper (and some highlights from the paper) on Amazon’s DynamoDB, tracing out ten years of evolution of a very focused (and highly used) software product, DynamoDB. Like Python Tutor in #127, these longitudinal papers that trace out the path of a product over a long period give a fascinating glimpse of the mindset in driving an effort over time.
Research Data Management and Analysis
FLUTE: A scalable federated learning simulation platform - Dimitriadis, Garcia, Diaz, Manoel, and Sim, Microsoft Research
As research computing starts getting more and more involved in sensitive data - not just health, but social sciences, too - privacy-enhanced methods of analysis are going to become more and more important. So I’m really pleased to see Microsoft Research come out with an open-source framework for studying and experimenting with federated learning, FLUTE - there’s a paper as well. Unlike say Flower, or (disclaimer: I work at NVIDIA) NVIDIA’s FLARE, which are meant for production use, this is meant for research into federated learning. But having well-designed testbeds for developing and prototyping federated learning methods is vitally important if we’re going to put more federated approaches into production.
There’s a lot to like here - because it’s for experimentation, it’s really aimed at running on a single cluster (it uses MPI internally), can scale up to thousands of clients, has support for tonnes of data types, models, data sets, and optimizers, and has an expandable plugin architecture.
Research Computing Systems
Rocky Linux 9 arrives with everything you need to replicate the distro on your own - Steven Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet
Rocky, the new RHEL clone intended to replace CentOS, is out with their version 9 - but more importantly, so is their build system for creating releases from the upstream. Not only will having proper automation around this make release turnaround times, which is already a good thing. This also means the work continue if something falls apart in the governance of this effort, and that it will be much easier for small efforts to create other custom distributions from Rocky or RHEL.
Webinar: Cloud Versus On Premises Architecture for Life Sciences (YouTube link) - Ari Berman, Bioteam
Berman, whose organization has spent a lot of time working with wide range of computational life sciences teams in academia and industry, gave a webinar on “cloud versus on premises”. It's a good talk, although I got a bit salty about one of the slides.
But I'd like us to move past this topic. Right now, AWS or GCP will deliver their cloud hardware into your data centres to run there, if you want. Various commercial software can be subscribed to to manage infrastructure control. Hardware can be leased, bought, sold back. If your data centre is a co-lo, so the premises aren’t yours, is it really on premises? And…
There’s a whole spectrum of options available today, and our community, is still debating “on-prem vs cloud” like it’s 2012. It would do us and our researchers well to have more sophisticated discussions. The question isn’t “on-prem vs cloud”, it’s what should be bought outright and what should be leased for a given workload mix.
Here are some real options for moderately-sized teams charged with delivering the capabilities of a system to users right now:
- Buy the hardware outright, install all open-source software,
- Buy the hardware outright, install a lot of “rented” commercial software (or commercial support of open source software)
- Buy some hardware outright and install something like Azure Stack, renting a lot of the infrastructure software and control plane
- Lease the hardware, with any of the software options above
- Host any of the hardware options above in a datacenter you own, “renting” the data centre operations staff’s time (cooling, power, internet, physical security..)
- Any of the hardware above in a leased space where you control and have to manage the utilities, renting the same staff time
- Any of the hardware above in an an institutional or commercially-managed space where you are now “renting” the space and their data centre operations staff
- Rent medium-term reserved hardware at a cloud provider, combining data centre ops, some systems ops, and the hardware for moderate periods of time
- Mix of the above plus short-term “renting” of on-demand or shorter-term contract nodes/services
- All short-term
- “Hybrid”, which just means a mix of any two or more of any of the combinations above
It’s not “A vs B” any more, and it hasn’t been for ages. We have a widely diverse research community with its huge range of use cases to support, and we need to think in more sophisticated ways than obsolescent binaries.
(And here’s a controversial take: You know who in our institutions are really, really smart about leasing versus buying for big capital needs? Who have taken, like, whole postsecondary courses on the topic? The folks in the finance department).
Emerging Technologies and Practices
While the quantum tutorials review last issue in #129 was more about a study of pedagogy, Chiara Decaroli’s Guide to Online (Mostly Free) Resources for Learning Quantum Computing gives a list of resources for the learner of those wanting to learn more about quantum computing. Readers of this newsletter are probably interested in the “With Math” sections.
Random
Make fizzbuzz. No, not “compile a program to run fizz buzz” - fizzbuzz implemented with GNU Make and seq. Followed up by one entirely in GNU Make.
How slack bots and chat ops can almost go terribly wrong together.
I love performance debugging stories - here’s one where memory zeroing in parallel was dramatically slowing things down.
And here’s one puzzling out why two identical SQL queries differed in speed by a factor of almost 6.
You can “dig uk” or “dig ca” but you can’t “dig ch”. Why can’t you dig Switzerland?
DARPA is trying to figure out how to secure open source.
It’s perfectly normal for a build system to require thousands of words to explain how a tiny but crucial piece of it works, right? Anyway, here’s part multi-part series into how caching works in Bazel.
Tail call optimizations in webassembly.
A great walk through with nice visuals of Delaunay Triangulations.
Research computing is fun and weird. Here’s a Rust package for estimating the size of a critter from its poop.
That’s it…
And that’s it for another week. Let me know what you thought, or if you have anything you’d like to share about the newsletter or management. Just email me or reply to this newsletter if you get it in your inbox.
Have a great weekend, and good luck in the coming week with your research computing team,
Jonathan
About This Newsletter
Research computing - the intertwined streams of software development, systems, data management and analysis - is much more than technology. It’s teams, it’s communities, it’s product management - it’s people. It’s also one of the most important ways we can be supporting science, scholarship, and R&D today.
So research computing teams are too important to research to be managed poorly. But no one teaches us how to be effective managers and leaders in academia. We have an advantage, though - working in research collaborations have taught us the advanced management skills, but not the basics.
This newsletter focusses on providing new and experienced research computing and data managers the tools they need to be good managers without the stress, and to help their teams achieve great results and grow their careers.
Jobs Leading Research Computing Teams
This week’s new-listing highlights are below; the full listing of 199 jobs is, as ever, available on the job board.
iTechnical Project Manager II, Center for Data-Driven Discovery in Biomedicine - Chidren's Hospital of Philidelphia, Philadelphia PA USA
We are the Center for Data-Driven Discovery in Biomedicine (D3b - d3b.center), an ambitious and unique blend of software developers, scientists, clinicians, researchers, and other critically important personnel, working together to accelerate research on childhood cancers and genetic disorders. As a Technical Project Manager in the Center, you will be responsible for ensuring ongoing project goals are met by working with data analysts, engineers, and researchers who are exploring and developing applications, tools and workflows for biomedical data. You will interact with a wide variety of stakeholders and users to understand gaps in the current research landscape, assist in distilling that into requirements, and work closely with technical teams to ensure quality design, implementation, and timely delivery. Your unrelenting commitment to a culture of collaboration will constantly look to acknowledge team contributions, and identify areas of improvement in processes, application functionality, and operational efficiency to better empower delivery of product excellence and improve usability for our stakeholder community.
Manager, Data Management and Linkage, Australian Institute of Family Studies - Australian Government, Melbourne AU
An exciting opening has arisen for a Manager, Data Management and Linkage to manage complex end-to-end data management activities, including key data governance processes for our flagship longitudinal study, Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The Manager, Data Management and Linkage will take a leading role in managing and delivering high level data governance and management standards. The role touches on all aspects of the data lifecycle and adheres to industry best practices.
Assistant Director, Allen School Data Core - Washington State University, Pullman WA USA
The Assistant Director, Allen School Data Core is responsible for the design, implementation, and oversight of the data collection infrastructure at the Paul G. Allen School for Global Health, primarily supporting the Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses (DEEP VZN), a major multi-year project supported by USAID. The data infrastructure needs for this position include, but are not limited to REDCap, data repositories and version control systems for genomic and laboratory data as well as analytical code. This position entails both high level data architecture duties – ensuring that the implemented systems are fit-for-purpose, follow best practices for research data collection, etc. and responsibility for the overall implementation of these systems and support for both domestic and international users.
Research Leader - Future Storage Systems - Huawei Research Center, Zurich CH
Conduct research on new directions in Storage OS/Software/Platform for new applications (high performance computing, artificial intelligence, big data, etc.), and on new emerging computing and storage hardware.
Take a leading role in the team and work with internal research colleagues and academic research partners to achieve new breakthroughs in future storage system research and be responsible for critical prototype design and development.
Data Platform Program Manager - Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Parkville AU
n this role you will be responsible for designing and delivering a centralised cloud-based data platform. Working closely with IT, security, the research project managers, and cross campus stakeholders you will be responsible to deliver a common architecture and a fit for purpose solution that will enable future scalability both for different types of research data as well as increasing demand and various tools. To be successful in this role you will possess exceptional communication skills and enjoy building and maintaining strong relationships between internal stakeholders and external vendors. You will be confident in supporting the design, selection, implementation and operation of the technology required to position MCRI as an internationally leading MRI! Bring your exceptional data management skills to help improve data management for all research and beyond!
Senior Manager, Data Engineering and Architecture - AbbVie, North Chicago IL USA
AbbVie Information Research is seeking a Senior Manager, Data Engineering & Architecture who would be accountable for architecture, design, and development of data and technology solutions supporting Clinical Development, Regulatory & Quality Business Platforms at AbbVie. As a Senior Manager, you will be a core member of a high-performance team of data engineers and architects focusing on driving technology innovation and continuous improvement. This role collaborates with senior leadership, business relationship managers, product owners, program managers, enterprise architects, business analysts, infrastructure team, and service providers to deliver the solutions.
Data Science, Technical Lead Operations Research - Bayer, Chesterfield MO USA
lead development of data science innovations using operations research & numerical optimization methods; lead development & deployment of new operations research methods to advance pipeline and product development; analyze & observe existing big data operations systems to identify areas for optimization; formulate mathematical & simulation models of data-driven operations research problems; develop & maintain data science applications focused on prescriptive analytics; lead development & presentation of recommendations to stakeholders to drive strategic and operational business changes; hire, lead & mentor team of data scientists on operations research projects.
PhD Senior Research Data Scientist, Decision Sciences Identity Team - Epsilon, Chicago IL USA
In this role, you will lead and contribute to new and ongoing research and development efforts that advance Epsilon's identity match abilities – leveraging data science, machine learning and other disciplines to create new data-driven capabilities for our real-time digital marketing business. Lead and individually contribute to data science and machine learning R&D projects Use your expertise in data science, machine learning, and computer science to lead research projects and recommend solutions to technology and business problems Interview candidates for open positions on our team. Lead and contribute to projects from early-stage research through development, in consultation with stakeholders
Senior Technical Program Manager, Azure Specialized Compute - Microsoft, Atlanta GA USA
Azure Specialized Compute drives the hardware roadmap, software and services that enable our users to run technical computing workloads in Azure - from batch workloads to AI & machine learning to traditional HPC simulations to remote visualization. This team member would be responsible for HPC industry standard and customer specific application benchmarks on our latest and greatest hardware offering showcasing the best of Azure. Typical team project would include gathering performance data and characteristics for key HPC applications, analyzing and optimizing the application to run best on Azure HPC infrastructure based on latest GPUs, CPUs and other accelerators
Software Engineer Manager, R&D Ops - CrowdStrike, Remote CA
CrowdStrike is seeking an experienced Software Engineering Manager to support our Advance Detection Research team. You will lead by example and will get your hands dirty leading day to day activities, resource planning, evaluating and deploying new solutions, technologies and products for all on the team. As needed, you will lead troubleshooting of application, network, database, and architectural challenges using the expertise of your team.
Digital Library Software Developer, University Libraries - Stanford, Stanford CA USA
The Digital Library Software Developer will join a team supporting discovery, access, and delivery as part of its digital library, an internationally recognized technology program developing innovative solutions to advance teaching, learning and research at one of the world’s leading universities. We are a mission-driven organization that emphasizes open, collaborative work and community engagement within Stanford and with partner institutions around the world. Mentor lower level software developers.
Project Manager Technical Support - EMBL-EBI, Hinxton UK
We have an opportunity for an experienced Project Manager to join the dynamic and international team at the ELIXIR Hub in Hinxton near Cambridge, UK. The main purpose of this role will be to provide PM support to internal and externally funded Infectious Diseases Activities (COVID-19) (e.g BY-COIVD, ELIXIR-CONVERGE and forthcoming grants) including the preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. These activities are expected to last until 31/4/2025 in alignment with the anticipated duration of Horizon Europe emergency calls and the ELIXIR internal projects.
Research Computing Architect - Sacramento State University, Sacramento CA USA
Under the supervision of the Director of IT Infrastructure & Identity, the position’s primary role is to be responsible for the architecture, design and deployment of Scientific Computing’s computational and data science ecosystem. This ecosystem includes high-performance computing (HPC) systems, research databases, and research network connectivity.
Research Computing Services Director - Stanford University, Stanford CA USA
The Stanford Research Computing Center (SRCC) has a new management opportunity in support of university-wide research computing services. In this role, you will work with SRCC leadership, internal team members, research teams, and other key stakeholders to establish and implement strategic research computing priorities. You will lead the development, roll-out and delivery of new services as well as strengthen and expand current service offerings.
Senior Computational Research Support Analyst, Wu Tsai Institute - Yale University, New Haven CT USA
The analyst will collaborate directly with researchers in the Wu Tsai Institute (WTI) at Yale University focused on computational methods, as part of the WTI’s Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence (the “Center”). The successful candidate will serve as the lead research computing support resource for faculty, graduate students, and affiliated researchers in the WTI and more specifically the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence, enabling the efficient use of both internal and cloud-based research computing resources. An important part of this job is to collaborate with others at the YCRC in the design, deployment, and support of state-of-the art cluster resources with GPU and FPGA accelerators for advanced machine learning and computational modeling of neural data and simulations.
Chief HDF5 Software Architect - The HDF Group, Urbana-Champaign IL USA
As the Chief HDF5 Software Architect, you develop detailed architectural designs for software solutions. You are able to make and communicate fundamental structural choices that are costly to change once implemented. You demonstrate and instill the discipline that is necessary to keep HDF5 software gracefully extendible. You act as a mentor within the engineering team. You report directly to the Director of Software Engineering. Compensation is commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Director of Software Engineering - The HDF Group, Urbana-Champaign IL USA
As the leader of the Software Engineering Team at large, you set the tone and shape the engineering culture. You are the organization’s face to our closest partners and our most important customers. Based on your unique mixture of expertise and experience, you engage at all levels in research, development, consulting, opportunity analysis, and community outreach. You report directly to the Executive Director. Compensation is commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Software Developer, Co-lead, DataHub - VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, Ghent BE
At the ELIXIR Belgian Node, we aim to enable researchers to collect, analyse, and publish high-quality and machine-actionable (meta)data during their experiments by providing user-friendly and easy-to-use web-based platforms. The ELIXIR Belgium team has developed DataHub (https://datahub.elixir-belgium.org), a platform for research (meta)data management that streamlines the processes of (meta)data collection and publication. We are now looking for a talented software developer interested in research software to co-lead the development of DataHub. You will join an international team of developers, and work with a multidisciplinary team to further develop the platform that enables researchers to implement the principles of Open Science.
HPC Devops Lead - AstraZeneca, Cambridge or Macclesfield UK or Waltham or Gaithersburg USA or Gothenburg SWE
The Scientific Computing platform is a foundational capability to deliver HPC and scaled computing solutions for AstraZeneca’s R&D. Embedded within the Research D&A organisation it provides the backbone to domain-specific analytic products around computational chemistry, imaging, multi-OMICs, structural biology, data science and AI engineering. The successful candidate will promote DevOps engineering practices and technologies inside the scientific computing team as well as outside of the enterprise. The role is on the IC track. It is encouraged to spend 40/30/30 on hands-on development, and leadership activities like coaching, mentoring and driving the Platform Ops strategy.
Research Data Architect - Plant & Food Research - Science New Zealand, Aukland or Palmerston North or Christchurch NZ
We have a new and exciting opportunity in our Information & Knowledge Services team where you will be responsible for the development, design and implementation of Plant & Food Research's new data management framework that operationalises our Research Data Management Policy. Your extensive experience, ability to collaborate, and self-motivation will be essential in being the leader for the research, development, implementation, testing, and maintenance of IT solutions that support our data analytics and scientific computing platforms (which include Plant & Food Research's High-Performance Computing and MLOps environments). You will ensure that this aligns with the business and researcher's requirements, and platforms that enables our research mission.
Senior Product Manager - Q-Ctrl, Sydney AU or Los Angeles CA USA or Berlin DE
As a team made up of physicists and engineers through to our world leading product, design and marketing teams, our diverse experience leads to an incredibly impactful and creative environment. Q-CTRL is looking for an experienced Senior Product Manager to lead one of our emerging Products. Join a team that’s tackling the hardest problems in the world’s most impactful new technology – quantum computing. Q-CTRL builds software to enable customers to deploy the most effective quantum controls to suppress errors in their quantum hardware – combining modern product design and engineering with state-of-the-art quantum control techniques. This role will report into our Head of Product.
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist - Project Manager, Dept of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reporductive Sciences - UC San Diego, San Diego CA USA
Applies advanced computational, computer science, data science, and CI software research and development principles, with relevant domain science knowledge where applicable, to perform highly complex research, technology and software development which involve in- depth evaluation of variable factors impacting medium to large projects of broad scope and complexities. Designs, develops, and optimizes components / tools for major HPC / data science / CI projects. Resolves complex research and technology development and integration issues. Gives technical presentations to associated research and technology groups and management. Evaluates new hardware and software technologies for advancing complex HPC, data science, CI projects. May represent the organization as part of a team at national and international meetings, conferences and committees. Assists in the design, implementation and recommends new hardware and software technologies for advancing complex HPC, data science, CI projects. Acts as a project manager and may lead a team of research and technical staff.
Principal Scientist Bioinformatics & Data Science - exelixis, Remote
The Principal Bioinformatics and Data Scientist is a highly motivated bioinformatician and data scientist who has experience in conducting computational analyses of clinical and multi-omics data sets to identify potential predictive, prognostic and pharmacodynamic biomarkers.
Senior Manager/Associate Director, Diagnostic Bioinformatics - Mammoth Biosciences, Brisbane AU
Mammoth is seeking an Senior Manager / Associate Director with expertise in bioinformatics and software engineering to join its Diagnostics team. This role will lead a team focused on designing new diagnostics assays, supporting data needs for on-going research projects, and developing in-house software tools for data analysis and data tracking. The successful candidate will contribute towards Mammoth’s efforts to develop innovative CRISPR-based diagnostic products that enable consumers to access their health information in a timely manner. This position will work closely with both the diagnostics research and development teams on a variety of projects including primer and gRNA design.
Director, Research Bioinformatics and Data Science - Saint Luke's Health System, Kansas City MO USA
Responsible for the implementation, expansion, and on-going management of the research informatics applications at Saint Luke’s Health System, including biostatistics, data science, clinical research data management, internal and the overall data warehousing. Leads development of a formal research bioinformatics strategy that will align with the overall Research Strategic Plan. Develops standards including standard operating procedures, for the analytical and data management teams in clinical research. Responsible for recruiting and retaining best talent to the bioinformatics and data science teams as well as providing mentorship, technical direction and strategic guidance to the bioinformatics and data science team members.
Director Research Computing - Radiology - Washington University in St Louis, St Louis MO USA
Position manages the administration, support, operational, and developmental functions for Research Imaging Division facilities specialized computing systems and resources. Coordinates with Senior Director of IT regarding overall Department and University policies and procedures, standards, processes, and projects.
Technical Lead, Data - BenchSci, Remote CA or US or UK
We are looking for a Technical Lead - Data to join our growing Data team! Reporting to the Engineering Manager, you will evolve our data models, operationalize production-grade data pipelines, and contribute to our document mining/information retrieval initiatives as we expand our ability to extract valuable insights from scientific publications and databases. You will get to lead specific data projects that directly contribute to our client's understanding of drug discovery research. This is a fit for you if you excel at pulling meaningful insights from data, love making an impact and want to share your technical creativity and expertise with the folks around you. The technical lead role is a unique expansion of the scope of a Senior Data engineer that takes on multiple facets of technical leadership, team building, and defining our technical roadmap.
Euro-BioImaging Bio-Hub – Scientific Project Manager – AI4LIFE - European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg DE
The successful candidate will be an integral part of the highly international and still young Euro-BioImaging Bio-Hub team at the EMBL in Heidelberg. The scientific project manager will have the opportunity to work collaboratively in a small but diverse team with expertise in imaging technologies, image data management and analysis, project management, communication and outreach, training, industry relations and science policy. The postholder will also work closely with the scientific coordinators of the AI4LIFE project, and various project partners.
Director, Scientific Applications - Purdue, West Lafayette IN USA
As the Director of Scientific Applications you will provide leadership for the support of computational science within Purdue’s campus cyberinfrastructure, and in support of the NSF-funded “Anvil” system. In collaboration with campus and national stakeholders, implement and oversee the strategic direction for research computing at Purdue. you will work extensively with the user communities to maintain the highest level of service and satisfaction through effective service delivery. Collect feedback on user needs, potential use case scenarios, and user priorities to be integrated in the future direction for computational resources. You will work closely with faculty members, IT leaders, and peers at other institutions, and assist the Executive Director of Research Computing with the operational oversight of Research Computing services including budgeting, resource planning and creation of policy, procedures, and standards
Associate Director or Director of Bioinformatics - Talentry (Recruiter), San Diego CA USA
Talentry is looking for an experienced Associate Director or Director of Bioinformatics, who has worked with RNA, to aid in the design and characterization of mRNA drugs. The right person will optimize sequence design, structural data, regulatory and signaling, codon sequences, etc., with the aid of data from public and proprietary sources. The right person for this role will be responsible for a team that will cleanse the data, analyze the data, create new software tools, build and implement machine learning and software tools, recommend mathematical models, etc.
Director of Technology - The Carpentries, Remote
Candidates for this role should have demonstrated experience in managing technical projects and providing strategic direction. They should lead with empathy and value a team culture that emphasizes collaboration and effective communication. We seek candidates who are dedicated to the growth of The Carpentries team and ready to mentor their colleagues. Additionally, we seek candidates who have previous experience working for an open-source project or for a non-profit organisation, and candidates who understand the specificities of providing services and designing products for a large, diverse, and global community of volunteers. Experience hiring and managing independent contractors is also preferred.