Research Applications & Data Services Officer

About The Role

We’re looking for a Research Applications & Data Services Officer to join our New Services Development team. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys exploring emerging technologies, working hands‑on with research communities, and translating complex research needs into practical, scalable solutions. You’ll be working at the intersection of research, data, and technology, helping shape next‑generation services across the European research and education community.

The work is varied, technical, and collaborative, from early‑stage exploration and prototyping through to supporting services that can scale across national and European infrastructures. This role suits someone curious, technically minded, and motivated by building services that have real impact across research and scientific communities.

You’ll explore emerging technologies and trends across research data, data science, and AI, identifying opportunities that can support future research services. You’ll contribute to horizon scanning, help assess how technologies apply across the research data lifecycle, and take part in early‑stage activities such as proofs of concept, pilots, and technical evaluations.

You’ll contribute to the design and early development of new services. This includes translating research needs into technical requirements, supporting prototyping activities, and helping assess technical feasibility. You’ll work on services that span the full research data lifecycle, from acquisition and processing through to sharing and preservation.

A key part of the role involves engaging with researchers, research communities, and national research and education networks (NRENs). You’ll work to understand complex data‑driven workflows and ensure these needs are reflected in the services being designed and developed.

You’ll support the evaluation and integration of data platforms, analytics tools, repositories, and research computing environments. You’ll also contribute to understanding how services can operate within federated environments, including authentication and authorisation infrastructures (AAI), ensuring they are secure, interoperable, and scalable.

You’ll work as part of a distributed, international team, contributing technical input to European projects focused on research data and AI‑enabled infrastructures. You’ll collaborate closely with internal teams, partners, and external stakeholders to move ideas from concept through to implementation.

You may be a good fit if you…

• Have a technical background in areas such as networking, identity and access management, data management, cloud, or security
• Understand the research data lifecycle and the role of data services in modern research
• Have experience or exposure to research data infrastructures, research computing, or data‑intensive environments
• Can translate research or user needs into clear technical requirements
• Enjoy working collaboratively with distributed, international teams
• Are curious, proactive, and motivated to explore new technologies and ideas

• Experience working with European or nationally funded research projects
• Familiarity with the research and education networking community (e.g. NRENs or federated infrastructures)
• Understanding of authentication and authorisation infrastructures (AAI)
• Interest or experience in AI‑driven research or data services
• Exposure to service design, prototyping, or early‑stage service development
• A Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science or Data Science

You’ll receive excellent benefits at GÉANT – we offer a generous holiday allowance and a 5% end of year bonus/allowance as standard. The other benefits you receive will depend on the country you are employed in, but you can rest assured that these will include an appropriate pension scheme and medical insurance. For full details of our benefits package please see our careers website - (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)./

We have adopted a flexible‑hybrid model which means that employees will work flexibly between a remote and office environment. Weekly visits to the office are required for most employees to support our values and collaborative culture and enable our teams to deliver great work. For this role we anticipate that you may be required in the office for around 2 days per week.