Software Research & Development Engineer

About the Swiss Data Science Center

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is a national research infrastructure in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) within the ETH domain, established by EPFL and ETH Zurich. Our mission is to support academic labs, hospitals, industry, and public sector stakeholders, guiding them through their data science journey from collection and management to machine learning, AI, and industrialization. With a multidisciplinary team situated across Zürich, Lausanne, and Villigen, we deliver expertise and services across various domains, including health, biomedical sciences, energy, sustainability, climate, environment, and large-scale scientific infrastructures.

Role Overview

Join our project-based engineering team in Zürich, where we focus on transforming research outcomes into production-ready data science infrastructure. This role complements our platform teams by exploring, building, and validating solutions before they become established services.

Your Contributions

In this capacity, you will:

• Engage in focused exploration and prototyping, shaping solution spaces, testing approaches, and making technical decisions in the early phases of projects.
• Contribute to the development of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), constructing operational, reusable components suitable for production environments as projects mature.
• Collaborate with engineers across various stacks to develop end-to-end solutions, with a primary focus on backend, data, and infrastructure components, while occasionally supporting user-facing elements.
• Ensure continuity beyond the project lifecycle by transitioning successful MVPs into production and working closely with internal platform teams and partner IT units.
• Co-design solutions with users and domain experts, participate in workshops, and iteratively refine requirements to develop robust implementations.

Key Qualities and Skills

We are seeking individuals who:

• Have a strong desire to build effective systems and are adept at navigating ambiguity while engaging with stakeholders.
• Value quality, clarity, and long-term usability in their work, ensuring that systems are secure and aligned with best practices.
• Possess a background in software engineering, data engineering, or a related field, with enthusiasm for data-intensive systems.
• Hold a solid foundation in software or data engineering, typically acquired through a master's or higher degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Are comfortable working between teams to facilitate collaboration among research, engineering, and operations.
• Possibly have experience with modern software and data engineering practices including version control, testing, APIs, data pipelines, containerization, and programming languages such as Python, Go, or Rust.
• May possess knowledge in data modeling or semantic interoperability, which would be beneficial.

What We Offer

• A stimulating, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary environment within a world-class research institution.
• Flexible work arrangements.
• Exciting challenges and varied projects that provide ample opportunities for learning and professional growth.
• An opportunity to leverage your skills and passion to positively impact research communities and society.
• A creative atmosphere encouraging experimentation and the adoption of new technologies.

We look forward to sharing more about our work and the opportunities that await you at SDSC.