Senior Investigator Scientist – Data Scientist*

*Senior Investigator Scientist – Data Scientist*

*Starting Salary £39,216 to £45,843 per annum*

*Band Salary £39,216 to £52,470 per annum*

*Open-ended*

*MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK*

An opportunity is available for an outstanding Senior Investigator Scientist – Data Scientist to join the group of Dr Albert Cardona at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) - https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/a-to-g/albert-cardona/ - with a solid background in neuroscience with particular emphasis on cellular anatomy of neurons and graph theoretic analysis of neural circuits, and a background in software engineering with a verifiable track record of developing and deploying software using best practices. In particular, version control with git in the context of a developer team, with ticket-based team work and test suites, in an open source working environment. As well as, hands-on experience in the reconstruction of neuronal arbors from volume electron microscopy, with both, computer assisted manual and semi-automated means, and also hands-on experience in the generation of ground truth data sets for learning classifiers and with the tuning and application of computer vision, and machine learning tools for both arbor reconstruction and proofreading. Furthermore, you should have experience in developing or applying machine learning frameworks for synapse detection and quantification in volume electron microscopy.

Your experience should include interacting with scientists from multiple disciplines, particularly with Biologists and be able to communicate effectively in a tight-loop with software users, translating between the language Biologists use for describing tool usage and specifications, and the formalisation of such tool feature requests into spec sheets, for tool development within existing or new software frameworks. With experience with bug triage and software users that lack a technical background, you will be able to produce mock up graphical interfaces for iterating user interface designs with tight user feedback.

You should be extremely familiar with microscopy file formats and high-performance image processing software libraries, with ample and demonstrable experience of its application to multi-terabyte data sets, and with deployment to both CPU and GPU clusters, as well as, to powerful multi-core servers and experience on how to optimise for and mitigate I/O bottlenecks. Showing demonstrable experience in building APIs for data access and modification of data structures for representation of neurons, and neural circuits via the web, created with programming languages and frameworks that enable fast-paced development and deployment and ongoing modification as need arises.

In addition, you will have a strong and demonstrable experience of the following; python programming language (at version 3.6 or above), PostgreSQL (version 10 or above), the Django framework for web applications, JavaScript for front-end in-browser applications, knowledge of the Rust programming language and its transpiling to webassembly for shared APIs for data processing on both the backend and frontends of a web application, and knowledge of the strengths and pitfalls of python bindings for Rust and other so-called low-level programming languages (such as C++ and C) and their libraries. You should be experienced with GPU computing and its often performance-critical integration into other frameworks and workflows, as well as, know how to use machine learning libraries with python bindings such as keras or pytorch, and have written code available in open source repositories where it can be evaluated by third parties.

The successful candidate will be awarded an open-ended position. Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Albert Cardona at acardona@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk . Additional information about the Neurobiology Division and the Laboratory as a whole can be found at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk .

The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology is a research institute within UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a new entity that brings together nine partners to create an independent organisation with a strong voice for research and innovation, more information can be found at www.ukri.org .

Working for UKRI MRC provides a whole host of benefits including a defined benefit pension scheme, excellent holiday entitlement (40 ½ days including bank holidays and privilege days) and Benenden Healthcare membership. You will also have access to employee shopping / travel discounts, on site sport and social facilities, as well as salary sacrifice cycle to work schemes and childcare vouchers.

To apply and access full details of the vacancy please visit our job board at https://mrc.tal.net/vx/appcentre-int/candidate/post/2926/en-GB . If you are unable to apply online please contact us at recruit@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk .

*Closing date: 8 October 2020*

Final appointments will be subject to a pre-employment screening.

The Medical Research Council is an Equal Opportunities Employer who participates in the Disability Confident scheme.