6, 7 or 8 depending on experience and qualifications

EMBL-EBI Hinxton

As soon as possible after closing date

We are looking for a scientific software engineer to work in the emerging field of Bioimage Informatics and help to improve the Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB), an international database of three-dimensional densit of macromolecular complexes and subcellular structures from high-resolution biological electron microscopy. Molecular electron microscopy is a rapidly developing technology for imaging molecular structures in their cellular context and promises to bridge structural biology and cellular and systems biology. The EMDB at EBI is well-established in its field and has excellent connections both to biochemical and microscopy labs and into bioinformatics. Recently, we have established a cooperation project with the Open Microscopy Environment (OME), one of the major image database systems used for optical microscopy in biology, developed at the University of Dundee. One of the major future interests for EMDB is to improve its usefulness to the electron microscopy community by providing better tools for the visualization of complex image data sets from which molecular structures are reconstructed, developing tools for statistical assessment of image quality, and harnessing emerging grid/cloud computing infrastructures for storage and computation. The post holder will contribute to the design, implementation, and maintainance of software components and algorithms using specifications set by the project leader at EBI and in close collaboration with an international project team, in particular the OME group in Dundee and the second EMDB site at Rutgers University. Further information about EMBD can be found at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe/emdb or by contacting the project leader, Dr Christoph Best at best@ebi.ac.uk

Applicants should hold an M.Sc. or Ph.D. in computer science/bioinformatics, or in physics, mathematics, (bio-)chemistry, biology or similar, with an emphasis on computational methods. A good understanding of mathematics and statistics and an interest in mastering the biological/biochemical background is essential. The ideal candidate will have experience in scientific image processing/image databases, computational biology, protein science/structural biology, grid/cloud computing, computer vision, and/or statistical methods. The post holder should have several years experience in scientific software development in an international academic or industrial context, preferably with a life sciences background. (S)he must demonstrate the ability to contribute to the design, implementation, and maintainance of scientific software at a professional level in close collaboration with a diverse team of scientists and software engineers. The successful candidate should be fluent in higher-level programming languages (preferably Java) as well as in scripting languages (preferably Python) and experience in the development of distributed web-based applications in a UNIX/Linux/MacOS environment using relational databases and XML would be highly advantageous. The post holder must be able to work independently in an international distributed team of scientists and take an active part in design and coordination tasks in the project.. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are a perrequisite as is the ability to present results at scientific conferences and in journal papers as well as in technical reports.

An initial contract of 3 years will be offered to the successful candidate. This can be renewed, depending on circumstances at the time of the review.

5 July 2009