Job Information
University of Washington RESEARCH SCIENTIST/ENGINEER 4 (TECHNICAL APPLICATIONS LEAD) in Seattle, Washington
Req #: 220788
Department: COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Posting Date: 08/12/2024
Closing Info: Open Until Filled
Salary: $7,500 - $7,725 per month
Shift: First Shift
Notes: As a UW employee, you will enjoy generous benefits and work/life programs. For a complete description of our benefits for this position, please visit our website, click here. (https://hr.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/02/benefits-professional-staff-librarians-academic-staff-20230119_a11y.pdf) For more information on the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, visit the Allen School website. (https://www.cs.washington.edu/)
As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.
UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.
The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington educates tomorrow’s innovators, conducts cutting-edge research in the core and emerging areas of the field, and leads a broad range of multi-disciplinary initiatives that demonstrate the transformative power of computing. Consistently ranked among the top computer science programs in the nation, the Allen School is widely recognized for the excellence and impact of our research and teaching across the region and around the globe. As a leader in efforts to broaden participation in computing, we are committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in our program and in our field. Members of the Allen School actively work to cultivate a welcoming community in which students, faculty, and staff with diverse backgrounds, identities, and experiences can thrive. The Allen School occupies two spectacular buildings — the Paul G. Allen Center and the adjacent Bill & Melinda Gates Center — located at the heart of the UW campus in Seattle.
The Allen School is seeking outstanding candidates for the position of Technical Applications Lead.
The Technical Applications Lead (payroll title: Research Scientist/Engineer 4) supports research being conducted by faculty and graduate students in the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology. This position will support the Transportation Data Equity Initiative project sponsored by the USDOT ITS4US program. This innovative data infrastructure project, with a broad partnership among state departments of transportation, transportation service providers, industry and community partners, seeks to enable mobility equity by creating an interoperable, shared data infrastructure to fill in gaps in current transportation data and ultimately, provide travelers needed information they can trust. Detailed, accurate data about pedestrian networks, travel environments (transit facilities, etc.) and on-demand travel services is crucial for any trip planner, trip concierge, wayfinding, or exploratory mobile application, in particular applications and mobile experiences serving the needs of people with disabilities, older adults, veterans, suburban and rural populations. The massive breadth of this project will be achieved through an accelerated timeline on currently planned technology innovations led by the DOT’s in each state, WA, OR and MD. This position will report to the Director, Taskar Center for Accessible Technology.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Working independently with occasional oversight, duties will include the following:
Provide scientific and project leadership in the role of Technical Applications Lead.
Complete and manage ongoing University required elements of the Transportation Data Equity Initiative (TDEI) grant, such as Review Board (IRB) requirements and USDOT requirements.
The person in this role is ultimately responsible for the technical applications internal to the interoperable data infrastructure. The actual creation of the TDEI infrastructure entails the extraction of specific data elements from various systems and raw data files into a database. Before being loaded into this database, automated data transformations, integrations and vetting will be required. This involves original research work in the area of graph and network homology in complex transportation layers. Additionally, the research output will require changing the formats of certain elements to conform to a standard, making all iterations of an element have the same data type and size. Importantly the research objectives of this work is to identify the algorithms that adequate summarize certain elements, graph features and graph topologies.
Additionally, the role of Technical Applications Lead is responsible for researching best practices and developing one instance of underlying application data tools that interface with data consumers and producers, specifically where analysis is required for the creation of data, or responding to complex queries against the database. The person in this role is also responsible for studying the best mechanisms to provide TDEI data tenants with the ability to store, reuse and modify data.
Serve as primary liaison with partners both virtually and in person.
Travel to partner communities and workshops; assist in the operation of community engagement workshops.
Provide ongoing automation for quality control, vetting, security and privacy for data collection and collation.
Resolve deployment and evaluation issues as discovered.
Use advanced project planning techniques aligned with the rest of the leading team for the project to manage project, evaluate project status, and interface with customer/grant sponsor.
Analyze and compiling results for academic publication and dissemination to partner organizations.
Assist in the development of future grant proposals. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
PhD in Computer Science or a related field, and at least 2 years of related research experience. Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration. ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Proficiency in at least 3 of the listed proficiencies in each of the following categories:- Extensive experience with data exploration exemplified by use of the following: pandas, R, SQL. Raster, OpenCV, Pillow, GDAL, Convolution, Vector: geos- Extensive experience with full-stack web development, VCS including Git, Docker and Cloud Native deployment, networking, security best practices.- Extensive experience using the following programming languages: Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Kotlin, Rust, R, SQL, Shell.- Demonstrated prior work experience and proficiency with unstructured data: NLTK, MongoDB, Beautiful Soup, Asynchronous requests.- Demonstrated knowledge, skills and abilities with basic data visualization, exemplified through use of 2 of: ggplot2, plotnine, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Altair, D3, SVG, interactive web maps.- Demonstrated knowledge, skills and abilities with machine learning: Supervised and unsupervised statistical inference models (scikit-learn: regression, classification, clustering).- Familiar with mixture models, Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, CNNs.
Experience writing papers for publication in top-tier conferences
Excellent technical writing, communication, and time management skills
Demonstrated experience communicating results through writing and presentations.
Demonstrated experience supervising and co-leading research efforts. DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Familiarity with C, MATLAB/Octave, and Ruby.
Experience with algorithms, data structures, system design.
Familiarity with computational geometry: spatial indices, geospatial transforms, exemplified by extensive work with one of the following: NetworkX, traversal, shortest paths, metrics. Application Process: The application process may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process. These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.
University of Washington is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, among other things, race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.