Postdoc on Software Quality and Discovery in a Virtual Research Environment

We are looking for a postdoc to tackle the software quality and discovery challenges in developing interdisciplinary data and computing-centric scientific applications. The candidate will participate in newly funded research projects (ENVRI-HUB next and LTER-LIFE) and interact with researchers from specific scientific domains to analyze the software quality and discovery challenges in the context of open science research activities.

Via use cases, such as digital twins of the ecosystem, essential climate variables, and cross-infrastructure big data pipelines, the candidate will develop effective software quality control and discovery services based on the community’s best practices and state-of-the-art technologies. The candidate will conduct the research and integrate the development results into a user-centered Virtual Research Environment being developed by the group.

The researchers will be embedded in the MultiScale Networked System (MNS) group, Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam. The candidate will work in an interdisciplinary team with domain scientists, modelers, and data curators to tackle the software challenges in developing virtual research environments and infrastructure services for constructing specific digital twins required by the ecological research domains.

What are you going to do?
The researchers will work in an interdisciplinary team and focus on the challenges in research software development and discovery. The candidate will

• review the existing models and best practices on research software quality control, and the state-of-the-art methods for searching and discovering research assets, e.g., software, data, and Jupyter notebooks, needed for composing scientific applications;
• develop software quality control and discovery solutions for scientific computing systems in a virtual research environment;
• collaborate with research software developers from different domains, and validate the development results via use cases.

The candidate should have a Ph.D. degree in computer science or relevant disciplines and fluently speak and write English. We are interested in people with:

• be familiar with basic search technologies, e.g., informational retrieval or semantic search,
• be experienced in programming (using Java, Python, or other languages)
• familiar with the basic open science principles
• excellent communication skills in speaking and writing,
• is willing to learn new methods, standards, and technologies when needed for the project.

It is a preference if you additionally have experience in performing interdisciplinary research together with another scientific specialty, e.g., biodiversity, environmental and earth sciences, or life sciences.

We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 24 months. The preferred starting date is September 2024.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 3,226 to € 5,090 (scale 10). UvA additionally offers an extensive package of secondary benefits, including 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.3%. The UFO profile Researcher 4 is applicable. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable.

Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment at Science Park we offer you multiple fringe benefits:

• 232 holiday hours per year (based on full-time) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
• Multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
• A complete educational program for PhD students;
• Multiple courses on topics such as leadership for academic staff;
• Multiple courses on topics such as time management, handling stress and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
• 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 100% salary;
• Partly paid parental leave;
• The possibility to set up a workplace at home;
• A pension at ABP for which UvA pays two third part of the contribution;
• The possibility to follow courses to learn Dutch;
• Help with housing for a studio or small apartment when you’re moving from abroad.

Are you curious to read more about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits, take a look here.

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is the Netherlands' largest university, offering the widest range of academic programmes. At the UvA, 42,000 students, 6,000 staff members and 3,000 PhD candidates study and work in a diverse range of fields, connected by a culture of curiosity.

The Faculty of Science (FNWI) has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The mission of the Informatics Institute (IvI) is to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component.

The MNS group is part of the Systems and Security Lab (SNE), one of the three research clusters at the Informatics Institute. The group focuses its researches on the fundamental architectural problems that arise from the interconnection of systems and of data flows. We look at the emerging architectures that can support the operations of the future Internet. In particular we focus on the delivery of secure and sustainable ICT services across multiple domains. Device programmability and virtualization play in this field an ever-increasing role in designing networks and ICT infrastructures. We address the interoperability challenges in supporting discovery, analysis and interoperation between heterogeneous complex infrastructures. Our vision is to build an effective ‘knowledge fibre’ to facilitate information discovery, integration and reuse across distributed infrastructures.

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.