This is an announcement for a full-time developer (Ingénieur de Recherche) position opening at Université Paris-Sud, working on open source software engineering for computational mathematics.
Time line
For now we hope to run interviews in early July, for a recruitment in early Fall 2015, and for up to four years (presumably in the form of a one year contract, renewable three times).
A second full-time developer will be hired later on, presumably in Fall 2016.
Salary
Depending on the applicant’s past experience, between 2000€ and 3000€ of monthly “salaire net” (salary after non-wage labour cost but before income tax). Equivalently, this is a “salaire brut” of up to 46200€ yearly, or a “salaire brut chargé” (total cost for the project) of up to 5500€ monthly.
Location
The developer will work at the Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique of Université Paris Sud, in the Orsay-Bures-Gif-Saclay campus, 25 km South-West of Paris city centre.
Mission
To support the maintenance and development of the OpenDreamKit components, and in particular of the SageMath project, by enhancing their software infrastructure, in close collaboration with the community.
Activities
A successful candidate will be expected to do significant progress, in close collaboration with the community, on some of the engineering tasks defined in the OpenDreamKit project. Among these:
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Improve the build, packaging, test, and distribution infrastructure;
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Improve the portability of many of the components, in particular on the Windows+Cygwin platform;
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Refactor the static Sphinx-based documentation system, and design and develop dynamic documentation tools;
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Participate in designing and implementing a component architecture for the SageMath ecosystem, as a foundation for Virtual Research Environments such as SageMathCloud;
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Participate actively in regular international development and training meetings with the other OpenDreamKit participants and the community at large.
For details, see the technical task lead by UPSud and UVSQ in Section 3.1.6 ``Workpackage Description’’ of the OpenDreamKit Proposal.
Skills and background requirements
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Fluency in C, C++, Python, …
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Strong experience with development and system administration in Unix-like environments;
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Experience with Windows development (Cygwin) desirable;
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Strong experience with software build systems (e.g. scons, cmake, or automake);
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Strong experience in open-source development (collaborative development tools, interaction with the community, …);
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Experience with code optimization, parallelism, etc, appreciated but not a prerequisite.
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Experience with computational mathematics software, in particular SageMath, desirable but not a prerequisite;
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Mathematics background and/or holding a PhD appreciated but not a prerequisite;
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Strong communication skills;
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Perfect fluency in oral and written English;
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Speaking French is appreciated but not a prerequisite.
Context
The position will be funded by
OpenDreamKit, a Horizon 2020 European Research Infrastructure project that will run for four years, starting from September
- This project brings together the open-source computational mathematics ecosystem – and in particular LinBox, MPIR, SageMath, GAP, PARI/GP, LMFDB, Singular, MathHub, and the IPython/Jupyter interactive computing environment. – toward building a flexible toolkit for Virtual Research Environments for mathematics. Lead by Université Paris-Sud, this project involves about 50 people spread over 15 sites in Europe, with a total budget of about 7.6 million euros.
Within this ecosystem, the developer will work primarily on the free open-source mathematics software system Sagemath. Based on the Python language and many existing open-source math libraries, SageMath is developed since 10 years by a worldwide community of 300 researchers, teachers and engineers, and has reached 1.5M lines of code.
The developer will work within one of the largest teams of SageMath developers, composed essentially of researchers in mathematics and computer science, at the Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique and in nearby institutions.
Comments
:warning: This is not a postdoc position. While side research will be welcome, and a few tasks may possibly lead to some research problems in computer science, the core tasks will be pure development. Candidates wishing to pursue an academic research career in the long run should consider twice whether this opportunity is adequate for them.
Applications
To apply for this position, please send an e-mail to upsud-recruitment-research-engineer at opendreamkit.org before July 1st, with the following documents attached:
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cover_letter.pdf: a cover letter, in English (why are you interested in this particular position);
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CV.pdf: a CV, highlighting among other things your skills and background and your contributions to open source software;
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phd_reports.pdf: PhD reports (when applicable);
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reference letters (each named reference_letter_
.pdf), or alternatively reference contact information.
Applications sent after July 1st will be considered until the position is filled.