Software Engineer for MX Data Acquisition

at  Diamond Light Source

ABOUT US

Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron science facility. By accelerating electrons to near light-speed, Diamond generates brilliant beams of light from infra-red to X-rays which are used for academic and industry research and development across a range of scientific disciplines including structural biology, physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering, earth and environmental sciences.
At Diamond we are currently undertaking a major upgrade of the facility, known as Diamond-II. Diamond-II will combine a new machine and new beamlines with a comprehensive series of upgrades to optics, detectors, sample environments, sample delivery capabilities and computing, which will ultimately generate an even more brilliant light source at a higher energy.

We now have an opportunity for a Software Engineer within the Diamond Data Acquisition (DAQ) group to support and develop the data acquisition software for experiments at Diamond. These experiments exploit single crystal X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of biological macromolecules, more generally referred to as macromolecular crystallography (MX). The determination of the structures of biological macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids and viruses by X-ray diffraction is a major activity within Diamond.
The MX experimental setups at Diamond are highly automated, enabling experiments to be planned and executed remotely. This provides an exciting opportunity to lead in the development of bespoke software to make experiments autonomous.
The MX DAQ team have already made significant progress in migrating beamlines from GDA to Athena.
As a Software Engineer in the DAQ Group you will work alongside other software engineers supporting a range of experimental techniques and developing DAQ capabilities in an open and collaborative environment. You will be required to interact with scientists and translate their specifications for scientific capabilities into software requirements.
You will liaise with controls, data analysis and information management engineers to put these requirements into action. You will collaborate with your MX DAQ team colleagues in the support and extension of DAQ solutions for the MX beamlines, and you will provide insight to the DAQ Core Team to influence the modernisation of the Acquisition Platform. You will also potentially participate in international collaborations within this domain, sharing best practice and supporting other facilities and synchrotrons within the collaboration.
Diamond is an exciting place to work. The work is both challenging and varied. With the upgrade of the beamline software architecture there is the opportunity to work with new and cutting-edge technology and approaches, such as containerisation, service-oriented software, modern Python paradigms and AI/ML. The new software architectural approaches offer greater opportunities for cross group and international cross facility collaboration.