Software Engineer

at  Science and Technology Facilities Council STFC

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL

Salary: £42,840 to £47,124 (Band D) or £53,818 to £59,199 (Band E) per annum (dependent on skills and experience)
Hours: Full time or Part time (minimum 30 hours per week)
Contract Type: Open Ended
Location: This role will be based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Harwell, Oxfordshire, due to the nature of the work.
Come and discover the kind of impact you can make when you work with some of the best facilities and brightest scientists in the world. We have an excellent opportunity for experienced software engineers to join a friendly team writing software to manipulate and automate cutting edge, precision instrumentation to deliver ground-breaking research. You will work as part of a multi-disciplinary group of engineers, technicians, and scientists to understand the requirements of our users and deliver software to meet them.
The Central Laser Facility (CLF) is part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), providing advanced laser research facilities for UK and international scientists. We are building two new laser centres - the £100M Extreme Photonics Applications Centre (EPAC) and the world’s most powerful laser facility - £85M Vulcan 20-20 – which will help scientists recreate interiors of stars in laboratory and work towards clean energy, as well as develop new types of particle and radiation beams for a wide range of applications in science and industry. We are seeking new team members to contribute to the design, construction and operation of these facilities.

You will work on the control system that orchestrates the various state-of-the-art technologies in our laboratories. Our control system is based on the EPICS open-source controls toolkit, used by large-scale science-facilities across our campus and around the world. We develop software in both Linux and Windows environments in a range of languages including C++, Python, and C#. Our engineers work on the whole software stack, from low-level device drivers up to the graphical user-interfaces for staff and external scientists. You will have the chance to develop and apply your skills in a wide range of tasks.

As a Software Engineer your responsibilities will include either supporting (Band D) or leading (Band E) the following:

• developing software to control scientific hardware, such as motion controllers, two-dimensional detectors, and lasers
• building intuitive applications to allow scientist to perform complex tasks as easily as possible
• producing technical documentation for both users and maintainers of our software
• work package management and management of safety (Band D)
• staff management, project management and management of safety (Band E)

We will provide training in EPICS, support from variety of experts in technical and scientific fields, and resources like Pluralsight and O’Reilly subscriptions to help you enhance your knowledge and skills.
We ask some of the biggest questions in the universe, to answer some of the biggest challenges in the world. Together, our scientists, technologists, engineers and business-support team explore the unknown across every field you could think of. And they turn what they find into work that changes the world around us.
What could you achieve with the world-leading facilities and experts of one of Europe’s largest research organisations by your side? Join us and discover what’s possible.
STFC values their employees by offering a benefits package designed to provide an excellent work/life balance including 30 days’ annual leave, 10.5 public and privilege holidays, flexible working hours, exceptional average salary pension scheme, social and sporting activities and societies and a subsidised restaurant.