Postdoctoral Appointee

About Sandia

Sandia National Laboratories is the nation's premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation, with teams of specialists focused on cutting-edge work in a broad array of areas. Some of the main reasons we love our jobs:

Challenging work with amazing impact that contributes to security, peace, and freedom worldwide
Extraordinary co-workers
Some of the best tools, equipment, and research facilities in the world
Career advancement and enrichment opportunities
Flexible work arrangements for many positions include 9/80 (work 80 hours every two weeks, with every other Friday off) and 4/10 (work 4 ten-hour days each week) compressed workweeks, part-time work, and telecommuting (a mix of onsite work and working from home)
Generous vacations, strong medical and other benefits, competitive 401k, learning opportunities, relocation assistance and amenities aimed at creating a solid work/life balance

World-changing technologies. Life-changing careers. Learn more about Sandia at:
These benefits vary by job classification.

What Your Job Will Be Like

Join Us in Pioneering Software Solutions for Computational Science and Engineering

Software lies at the heart of modern scientific endeavors, prompting the need for robust engineering practices. The future demands sustainable ecosystems of software, rooted in open-source and open science principles. As the role of research software engineers gains prominence, our team is at the forefront of bridging software engineering with scientific exploration. Software is now central to the scientific enterprise, which has brought the question of how to engineer high-quality software systems to the fore. The future is one of sustainable ecosystems of software embracing open-source and open science practices and principles. Recent years have seen the emergence of the research software engineer as a professional designation and growing interest in building bridges to the software engineering research community. Making progress on advancing the state of practice in computational science and engineering (CSE) will require a deep understanding of the interplay between software technologies and human factors in the processes of scientific discovery.

We are in search of a passionate Postdoctoral Appointee dedicated to advancing software methodologies tailored for research-to-production in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) domains. If you're driven by innovation and possess a keen interest in shaping the future of software engineering within CSE, we invite you to join our team. We seek a candidate focused on research in software methodologies for research-to-production CSE software, along with a curiosity about exploring, developing, adapting and adopting modern software engineering to the CSE software domain, including exploration of software productivity and sustainability metrics, development of tools and workflows, especially related to Agile methodologies built upon new and emerging software technology platforms. Activities will include working with research software engineers and the CSE teams that they serve to collaboratively create solutions that enhance productivity and sustainability for CSE research software products.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Spearhead the research and development of cutting-edge methodologies, metrics, tools, and best practices for CSE research software, leveraging platforms like GitHub and Docker and related modern software platforms.
Integrate emerging AI/ML technologies into software engineering practices and explore reciprocal benefits for AI/ML projects from software engineering techniques.
Engage with the global scientific community related to CSE software topics through publications, presentations, and active participation in relevant forums.
Collaborate effectively with software teams at Sandia and other DOE laboratories to enhance productivity and sustainability in CSE research software products.

This position based at our main campus location in beautiful Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Comprehensive support for professional growth, including funding for travel, registration, and accommodation expenses related to relevant conferences, workshops, and symposiums provided.

Postdoctoral Appointee Salary is $95,500.00/annual for NM Location.

Qualifications We Require

Possess, or pursuing, a PhD in software engineering, computer science or related STEM field (PhD must be conferred within 5 years prior to employment) or near completion in a STEM field with a strong emphasis on software
Experience in analytical thinking, experiment design, data analysis, and communication
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, as demonstrated through a track record of research in relevant fields, through publications, presentations, or project contributions including publishing research findings and presenting at conferences
Experience in programming languages relevant to HPC environments (C/C++, Fortran, Bash, Python, Julia, R, or similar languages) and general knowledge of Linux shell environments and scripting
Experience with one or more of the following: configuration management, issue tracking, continuous integration, software testing
US citizenship desirable but not required
Qualifications We Desire

Ability to conduct research independently and in collaboration with peers.
Experience with modern high-performance computing development stack and software development lifecycle
Strong team player with interpersonal skills, adept at multidisciplinary collaboration.
Experience in project management, agile methodologies, and/or other methods for organizing and accomplishing complex R&D projects
Knowledge of languages, libraries, and tools relevant to HPC contexts, including experience with HPC queue management software (e.g., PBS, Slurm, Flux); ability to compile, configure, and integrate open-source applications into HPC environment; experience with performance tuning; experience with programming for shared and distributed memory parallelism (OpenMP, MPI) and accelerators (GPUs).
Expertise in debugging, testing, and resolving complex software issues.
Proficiency in Agile methodologies and DevOps practices.
Experience crafting, maintaining, and automating (unit, integration, performance, acceptance) test suites
Experience with Agile software quality engineering and/or full software development lifecycle
Ability to use techniques to resolve complex software problems in applications and libraries, e.g., debugging tools, unit tests, and other techniques
Experience with modern DevOps infrastructure and practices (e.g., Git, CI /CD, GitLab and its workflows, Jenkins, VMs and/or containers, correctness testing including static, coverage, and memory analysis) and the use of branches and pull requests for change management
About Our Team

The Software Engineering and Research Department (1424), a department within the Center for Computing Research, is leading the strategic goal of furthering the substantiation of software engineering as an engineering discipline. This dynamic team of experts conducts fundamental and applied research, development and application in software engineering, design, and the processes and principles that underlie the establishment of quality, rigor, correctness, and repeatability in the implementation of algorithms and applications in software for high consequence applications.

The team focuses on applications for scientific computing, computational algorithms, large scale data analytics, and operating system components such as run-time systems and application programming interfaces. A key element of the work is teaming with application and algorithm researchers to establish a strong foundation in software methodologies, state-of-the-art practices, and maintenance and support for production codes and libraries. The department works closely with other organizations across Sandia and with external collaborators. The department is part of the Extreme Scale Computing group, which unifies computer engineering and science disciplines to advance highly scalable and performant computing architectures based on current conventional, as well as future non-conventional, technologies.

Posting Duration

This posting will be open for application submissions for a minimum of seven (7) calendar days, including the 'posting date'. Sandia reserves the right to extend the posting date at any time.

Security Clearance

This position does not currently require a Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance.

Sandia will conduct a pre-employment drug test and background review that includes checks of personal references, credit, law enforcement records, and employment/education verifications. Furthermore, employees in New Mexico need to pass a U.S. Air Force background screen for access to Kirtland Air Force Base. Substance abuse or illegal drug use, falsification of information, criminal activity, serious misconduct or other indicators of untrustworthiness can cause access to be denied or terminated, resulting in the inability to perform the duties assigned and subsequent termination of employment.

If hired without a clearance and it subsequently becomes necessary to obtain and maintain one for the position, or you bid on positions that require a clearance, a pre-processing background review may be conducted prior to a required federal background investigation. Applicants for a DOE security clearance need to be U.S. citizens. If you hold more than one citizenship (i.e., of the U.S. and another country), your ability to obtain a security clearance may be impacted.
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