L3 Software Development apprentice - University College London

Under the guidance of experienced team members, you will contribute to the development and maintenance of software used for analysis, modelling, data processing and much more. This post will provide hands-on experience and mentorship to individuals aspiring to build a career in software engineering within a research environment.

We are a team of over 40 Research Software Engineers (RSEs) at UCL Advanced Research Computing Centre (ARC) working on a variety of research, teaching and service projects. The key responsibilities of RSEs are:

• To collaborate with researchers from across UCL to understand their computational needs.
• To help build and maintain high-quality software that impacts research.
• To provide support on software practices and techniques to research groups, contributing to the development of robust and maintainable research software.

Some recent projects include a framework for epidemiologists to model disease dynamics in Malawi (Python, Pandas, Azure Batch, GitHub Actions), a dashboard for patients’ vital statistics in a hospital critical care ward (JavaScript, React, Python, FastAPI) and a framework to benchmark applications on supercomputing platforms (C++, Python).

You will:

• Work closely as part of a team to develop sustainable software to support research collaborators and improve ARC’s computational services.
• Assist in designing, writing and testing clean, efficient and well-documented code that has a positive impact on research.
• Seek to understand the needs of researchers and consider how to deliver software that addresses those needs.
• Troubleshoot software, identify bugs, debug and fix errors and failures to ensure proper functionality.
• Provide guidance on good software practices to research groups, contributing to the development of robust and maintainable research software.
• Stay updated on good software development practice, programming language features and new technologies.
• You will take the time to grow, trying new approaches and building experience and knowledge of good research software development practices such as capturing requirements, adhering to standards, documentation, version control, agile development, testing and reproducibility.
• You will be an active citizen of the department, the university, and the wider RSE community, building relationships and sharing knowledge with colleagues, helping others and seeking help as needed.
• You will learn how to evaluate and use different programming languages, platforms, frameworks or libraries to deliver the requirements of a variety of software projects.

You will also undertake at least one of the following:

• Provide help and support for research software, including through drop-in sessions.
• Contribute to ARC teaching and training, e.g. through assisting tutors or preparing material.
• Assist in project management tasks, such as organising tasks, tracking progress, and communicating updates to team members.

• Communication skills
• Organisation skills
• Problem solving skills
• Analytical skills
• Team working
• Software Development
• Current Technologies
• Version control/Testing
• Agile project management
• Programming languages
• Python, JavaScript, C++
• Quick learner
• Independent working
• DevOps

• English Language GCSE or equivalent, grade 4 (C) (Essential)
• Maths GCSE or equivalent, grade 4 (C) (Essential)
• Computer Science/ICT GCSE or equivalent, grade 4 (C) (Desired)