Postdoctoral Fellow for development of the Materials Cloud web platform
The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI is the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences within Switzerland. We perform cutting-edge research in the fields of future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and fundamentals of nature. By performing fundamental and applied research, we work on sustainable solutions for major challenges facing society, science and economy. PSI is committed to the training of future generations. Therefore, about one quarter of our staff are post-docs, post-graduates or apprentices. Altogether, PSI employs 2300 people.
For the Materials Software and Data Group in the Laboratory for Materials Simulations we are looking for a
Your tasks
This job opening provides the opportunity to join an exciting and very driven international team at the forefront of research in the field of materials discovery and design (and beyond), enabled by AiiDA, an open-source python framework for reproducible workflow management), and disseminated on the Materials Cloud portal. The candidate will join the group at PSI under the supervision of Dr. Giovanni Pizzi, collaborating with groups around the world (at universities, research institutes, and companies) where AiiDA and its plugins are developed and used (to enable the discovery of next-generation materials and, more recently, for broader applications in the field of weather and climate; and beyond simulations to orchestrate experiments, integrating them toward the creation of autonomous laboratories).
The successful candidate will be in charge of further developments of the Materials Cloud portal for FAIR sharing of Open Research Data ORD, enabling the transition to a sustainable infrastructure adopting modern software tools and libraries, both in the backend and the frontend of the web platform.
The position is funded by a Swiss Open Research Data project. Tight collaborations are expected also with NCCR MARVEL and the other projects in the group (full list of funded projects). The candidate is expected to collaborate with other project partners, including the Swiss Supercomputer Center CSCS (Lugano), EPFL (Lausanne), Empa, Eawag and WSL (Zürich), providing both great networking opportunities, and strengthening the candidate’s experience on backend development, frontend development, and/or DevOps.
The candidate will become a member of the Materials Cloud team. The tasks for the position will involve:
1. Advance the Materials Cloud platform by extending curated data sections of research projects such as MC2D and MC3D, and be directly involved in the corresponding materials science projects and their data pipelines.
2. Extend the Materials Cloud Archive portal to support new user-facing features and to export metadata in standardized formats, facilitating data exchange and interoperability at the Swiss level and internationally.
3. Contribute to the development of the underlying technology: the Materials Cloud backend (and, possibly, the AiiDA workflow engine and the AiiDAlab web platform for workflow management).
4. General maintenance of the Materials Cloud web portal such as: code review, issue management and bug fixes (including user support), implementation of new features including support of new technologies in the deployment and backend (e.g. ansible, docker, kubernetes) and frontend (React).
Your profile
Candidates are sought with strong organization skills and a passion for writing open-source tools for research, that can be used by a broad audience of users and researchers. Candidates are expected to show an excellent work ethic and to feel at home working in teams.
Requirements:
* PhD degree in a STEM discipline (a PhD in a field such as physics, chemistry, or materials science/engineering is a plus).
* Very good Python programming skills.
* Excellent frontend (JavaScript) programming skills (knowledge of React is a plus).
* Strong motivation for supporting materials science and discovery projects.
Desirable (but not required) skills include:
* Using software development tools (git, testing, continuous integration, …).
* Passion for User Interaction/User Experience (UI/UX).
* Experience with managing large amounts of data and/or running simulations on HPC.
* Experience with developing and deploying Python backend software.
* Knowledge of PostgreSQL and OpenSearch or Elasticsearch.
We offer
Our institution is based on an interdisciplinary, innovative and dynamic collaboration. You will profit from a systematic training on the job, in addition to personal development possibilities and our pronounced vocational training culture. If you wish to optimally combine work and family life or other personal interests, we are able to support you with our modern employment conditions and the on-site infrastructure.
Your employment contract is limited to 1 year, possibly renewable depending on future funding decisions.
For further information, please contact Dr Giovanni Pizzi, e-mail giovanni.pizzi@psi.ch.
Please submit your application online by 29 December 2024 (including list of publications and contacts of 2 people that could be contacted for a reference letter) for the position as a Postdoctoral Fellow (index no. 7301-00).
Paul Scherrer Institute, Human Resources Management, Mariusz Prus, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
www.psi.ch
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