Software Engineer – Frontend Web Developer (W/M)

Computing and Engineering Positions       ·       Switzerland        ·      Full time

EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,000 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 16,000 people, including over 12,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

Software Engineer – Frontend Web Developer (W/M)

Your mission :

The aim of the EPFL Blue Brain Project (BBP), a Swiss brain research initiative founded and directed by Professor Henry Markram, is to establish simulation neuroscience as a complementary approach alongside experimental, theoretical and clinical neuroscience to understanding the brain, by building the world’s first biologically detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mouse brain. The brain is one of the biggest Big Data problems we have today. Therefore, the Neuroinformatics Software Engineering team recently open sourced the Blue Brain Nexus platform to organize, store and process exceptionally large volumes of data in a semantic way and support usage by a broad number of users.

Going beyond the specific use case of the BBP, Blue Brain Nexus is designed to be agnostic of the data domain it is applied to, making it suitable for semantic data management within the scientific community as well as in many other industries. Blue Brain Nexus is already being used by scientists and researchers all over the world.

You would be joining the Neuroinformatics Software Engineering team, which is in charge of designing and developing the future of our open-source ecosystem Blue Brain Nexus, as a Frontend Web Developer.
You will be tasked with designing and creating rich web applications (Nexus Fusion) to facilitate the work of scientists such as organizing scientific workflows, sharing and searching data, and visualizations. You are a JavaScript developer passionate about open-source software and are familiar with the movements in the web development community. Likewise, you are comfortable kick-starting new software and are excited about greenfield projects. You have a product-oriented approach to designing user-centric and delightful software.

If you would like to read more about what we do, please take a look at the Blue Brain Nexus technology page, the announcement of its open-sourcing (read the EPFL press release) and an interview on the role of Neuroinformatics at BBP (read the Technology Networks’ interview).

Main duties and responsibilities include :

• Design and develop a web application to enable scientists in their collaborative data-driven activities.
  This will include:
  • registration of scientific data,
  • search capabilities to enable scientists to find and reuse relevant data,
  • visualize scientific data using react components,
  • integrate user interface with mainstream Data Science tools (e.g. iPython Notebook or workflow engines) to facilitate the computation of scientific data,
  • ability to curate and publish the outcome of scientific work on the web.
• Build tools, libraries and tutorials to facilitate the adoption of Blue Brain Nexus with other BBP teams and worldwide users,
• Participate in presentations, training, and technical discussions inside BBP and at conferences and workshops,
• All aspects of modern software development life-cycle: testing, continuous integration, DevOps, documentation and direct user support,
• Participate in the definition of the Blue Brain Nexus ecosystem roadmap and software specification,
• Participate in the recruitment of new talents and onboarding the new team members,
• Implement best-practices for maintainable software development.

Your profile :

Experience and preferred skills:

• Expertise in modern JavaScript and preferably Typescript,
• Experience with React and other JavaScript frameworks,
• Well-versed in the modern JavaScript ecosystem,
• Solid HTML and CSS knowledge,
• Experience working with REST APIs,
• Experience in working with modern version control systems such as git,
• Agile software development, unit and integration testing.

Experience in any of the following areas would be a plus:

• Experience in developing data visualization applications (d3.js, three.js, WebGL…),
• Experience in making compelling user experience and UI design,
• DevOps technologies (Docker, OpenShift, Jenkins),
• Semantic web technologies (RDF/OWL, SPARQL, RDF Triple Stores, JSON-LD),
• Graph Databases (Property Graphs, RDF Triple Stores),
• Knowledge of other programming languages, notably Python, Bash, and Scala.

Profile:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent professional experience,
• At least 3 years experience of frontend software development,
• Excellent command of the English language, both written and spoken. French would be a plus.

We offer :

• A world-recognized leader in simulation-based research in neuroscience,
• A dynamic, multidisciplinary, international and collaborative working environment committed to benefitting the global community,
• Opportunity to work on open source software with a growing community of users,
• A modern working environment, based at the Biotech Campus in Geneva Sécheron
• Telework in Switzerland and for G-permit holders possible up to 40%
• Relocation necessary

Start date: As soon as possible
Term of employment: Fixed-term (CDD)
Work rate: 100%
Duration: 1 year, renewable
Remark: Only candidates who applied through EPFL website or our partner Jobup’s website will be considered. Files sent by agencies without a mandate will not be taken into account.
Reference: Job Nb 1972

Please click here to apply.