As a mid-size university with 270 professorships and 20.000 students, the University of Bremen maintains a strong and internationally renowned interdisciplinary research focus on oceans and the global climate. The Institute of Geography invites applications for the following position, starting October 1st, 2021 (or as soon as possible thereafter), for the duration of 24 months:
Postdoctoral Researcher / Research Software Engineer
salary grade E 13 TV-L
full time position
Reference number: A136/21
The successful candidate will work in the project “A future-ready Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM)”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). This project seeks to improve the quality and usefulness of the codebase of the Open Global Glacier Model, a state-of-the art, open-source, flexible large-scale glacier modelling framework written in Python.
We seek to improve and develop the model in the following areas:
- code sustainability (testing, continuous integration, documentation) and flexibility (refactoring, reduction of the technical debt, interfaces for new parameterizations)
- uncertainty quantification (ensemble or Bayesian approaches, global sensitivity analysis, etc.)
- deployment on HPC and cloud based infrastructure (computational workflows, data ingestion protocols)
- documentation, tutorials, education, and outreach (e.g.OGGM-Edu)
Depending on the profile of the candidate, we are also keen to further develop OGGM in the following areas:
- implementation of new physical processes
- numerics (performance, implementation of higher order ice dynamics models)
- statistics and machine learning
The postdoc or research software engineer will focus on one (or more) of the topics listed above. We are looking for someone highly motivated by geoscientific software development. We are fully open to innovative ideas and to flexible work arrangements, and we are happy to adapt the content of the work assignment to your profile and qualifications. The minimum requirement is that these developments are useful for our growing community of users and are made freely available. If suitable, the results of these developments should be published in peer-reviewed journals (GMD, JAMES, etc).
Close collaboration is expected with the community of OGGM users and with the two main groups currently working on the development of OGGM at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Bremen. You will be invited (but not required) to spend some time at both institutions, as well as to organize online or in-person workshops in selected countries of the Global South, and at large international conferences.
To apply successfully, you will:
- have a PhD in a field of earth or computational science, or a university degree in computer- or geosciences or engineering and 3+ years of experience as a research software engineer (or equivalent)
- have demonstrated skill in scientific programming (Python highly favored)
- have experience with collaborative software development, standard version control tools (git) and software testing practices (continuous integration)
- be fluent in English (equivalent to CEFR level C1)
It will be advantageous if you can demonstrate:
- experience in the field of glacier or climate modelling
- working experience in a supercomputing or cloud environment and with container technologies (docker, singularity)
- a record of open-source software development (github or gitlab profile), in particular in the scientific python stack (Jupyter, Pangeo, etc.)
- that you will bring innovative ideas to the OGGM project and its ecosystem
Questions regarding the position should be addressed to Ben Marzeion and Fabien Maussion. The funded project proposal (slightly outdated today, but still relevant) is available here as a PDF.
The University of Bremen is an equal opportunity employer and aims particularly at increasing the share of female faculty members in research and teaching. Thus, qualified women are especially encouraged to apply. International applications and those from candidates with a migration background are explicitly appreciated. Candidates with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualifications.
Please submit your application including the reference number A136/21, a letter of motivation, CV (with copies of certificates), and contact details of two referees until August 31st, 2021 to:
Universität Bremen
Fachbereich 8
FB 8/3 – Reference number A136/21
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen
or by E-Mail to fb08.bewerbung@uni-bremen.de (Administration of the Department of Social Sciences, University of Bremen). Application/interview costs will not be covered by the University.