Senior Software Engineer
SKOKIE, IL
Team
Job Location
DATA ENGINEERING
Type of Job
FULL TIME
About the job
As a senior software engineer, you will grow to manage the ongoing development of the internal
software that provides actionable technical information across NuMat’s research, engineering, and
manufacturing organizations. You will collaborate with modelers and developers on a scientific python
stack, and you will be responsible for enforcing best practices such as test-driven development,
documentation, code style, and continuous integration. NuMat is a strong proponent of open-source science, and the engineering organization is seeking candidates who are excited by the prospect of contributing to the broader community. To support, NuMat is committed to providing resources for open-source engagement and development.
Responsibilities
The current stack is mostly asynchronous ≥Python 3.8, Django, PostgreSQL, and ES6 web interfaces,
version controlled in private and public github repositories, and deployed to redundant servers with
Docker Swarm. Scientific python libraries are used extensively. Responsibilities include:
Material design toolkit buildout. The team uses cheminformatics to rapidly query nanomaterial databases and identify candidate targets. This is a nascent capability that this role will expand upon to provide near-real time queries, a user interface, data quality improvements, and linkages to the company’s experimental database.
Mentorship. Senior Software Engineers must maintain existing capabilities and provide technical mentorship to the team. This includes keeping servers up to date, responding to issues, and teaching others how to use code to benefit their work.
The senior software engineer role will also support:
Quality assurance (MES). From laboratory samples to commercial products, all items delivered by NuMat must be traceable back to their starting materials. This is currently accomplished with a set of Django applications backed by a Postgres database. Future development will expand upon this base, providing an enterprise resource planning capability linking all company functions.
Control systems. The research and engineering teams produce data through a mixture of third-party and home-built equipment, which is then centralized in a PostgreSQL database and accessed through multiple applications. Senior Software Engineers support the Process Engineering team in developing new automations and providing workflow advice.
R&D modeling workflow. All internal modeling is run in a jupyterhub container and high-performance computing is performed on cloud computing infrastructure managed through Dask.
Developers must collaborate with the research organization to maintain and expand this workflow.
Individual Characteristics
Experience
A proven track record of developing and managing open-source projects utilizing the scientific python stack.
Preferably, maintain open-source projects used in chemistry, materials science, or chemical engineering.
Experienced in UNIX, python, databases, digital communication, and website front-ends.
Preferably, comfortable with the myriad industrial communication standards.
Preferably, comfortable with OAuth2, SSL/TLS, Docker, and nginx.
Experience in testing, documentation, version control, style guides, and writing Pythonic code.
Comfortable with advanced mathematics.
Preferably, experienced in chemistry and chemical engineering mathematics.
Preferably, experienced in cheminformatics.
Personal Characteristics
Self-motivated, confident, and able to work in a fast-paced environment with significant autonomy.
Entrepreneurial, with the ability to manage multiple priorities without incurring technical debt.
A passion for staying modern and learning new skills.
Able to collaborate across functional and organizational lines and capable of working with all levels of individuals and cultures as a leader, mentor, and follower.
NuMat Technologies (“NuMat”) is a start-up company innovating at the intersection of high-performance computing, chemistry and advanced manufacturing. NuMat is a recognized pioneer in the field of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — an emerging class of nanomaterials which can be programmed to uniquely interact with target molecules at the atomic level. NuMat’s expertise lies in the design and integration of MOFs into next-generation storage, separation and purification systems. In doing so, NuMat enables previously unachievable form factors, performance and cost-advantaged production economics in the electronics, life-sciences and energy sectors.