Job Description

SOFTWARE ENGINEER – BACKEND / DATA INFRASTRUCTURE

Our mission at the Allen Institute for Brain Science is to accelerate the understanding of how the human brain works in health and disease. Using a team science approach, we strive to drive technological innovations and discover fundamental brain properties through the integration of experiments and simulation. We generate large-scale neuroscience datasets, online search, visualization, and analysis utilities, and APIs. Our data is freely and openly shared with the public at www.brain-map.org.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science seeks a SOFTWARE ENGINEER to develop applications and open scientific databases that serve neuroscience and brain imaging research communities around the world. Your colleagues will contribute high volume scientific experiments to your databases; scientific, and other numerical software to process those data; and web applications that enable users to navigate, search, and visualize the data products.

As a Software Engineer, you will participate in the design and development of innovative, high performance, robust, scalable, and extensible software solutions, owning key capabilities and features. Typical activities include designing and developing software, writing unit tests, reviewing your peers’ code, documenting APIs, and demonstrating your work. We are building an Integrated Data Framework (IDF) which is a cloud-based service for processing, storing, and hosting scientific data used to push the cutting edge of neuroscience. We're using modern tools including GitHub, Apache Spark, AWS, GraphQL, TypeScript, and Python.

The Allen Institute believes that team science significantly benefits from the participation of diverse voices, experiences and backgrounds. High-quality science can only be produced when it includes different perspectives. We are committed to increasing diversity across every team and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply for this role.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Contribute to the development and maintenance of scientific databases and applications.
• Design data models and associated software architecture from high level functional requirements and team input.
• Collaborate effectively with experts in diverse scientific and engineering topics (neuroscience, high performance scientific computing, web applications).
• Apply modern software engineering workflow, including emphasis on code review, continuous integration, and automatic testing.

REQUIRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant technical discipline or equivalent work experience
• Proficiency in at least one general purpose, object-oriented language (Python, C++, Java, Ruby, C#, TypeScript).
• Experience writing SQL and using relational databases.

PREFERRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience with infrastructure as code including familiarity with Terraform or Cloud Formation.
• Knowledge of containerization; Docker or Kubernetes.
• Understanding of Scrum roles and practices
• Experience deploying and managing microservices on AWS.
• Experience with API design and development of RESTful / GraphQL web services

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• Fine motor movements in fingers/hands to operate computers and other office equipment

POSITION TYPE/EXPECTED HOURS OF WORK

• This role is currently working remotely due to COVID-19 and our focus on employee safety. We continue to evaluate the safest options for our employees. As restrictions are lifted in relation to COVID-19, this role may return to work onsite.

It is the policy of the Allen Institute to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, the Allen Institute will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.