Software​/API Engineer

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is seeking a versatile Software / API Engineer to join our team building software systems that integrate scientific workflows and supercomputing systems.

More than ever, scientific discovery transforms our world. NERSC is at the forefront, operating some of the world’s largest supercomputers for thousands of researchers who use computational power to solve society’s most challenging problems.

In this exciting role, you will work on API development and other software engineering projects to help automate the use of supercomputing resources and introduce cloud‑native and AI tools and techniques for researchers to use at massive scale. You’ll join a group of systems and software engineers and will routinely work with other groups across NERSC on a variety of projects.

You’ll also collaborate with our counterparts at peer scientific facilities, also operated by the Department of Energy Office of Science, on a national program to pool together vast computational and storage resources through the development of APIs, distributed services, and community standards and best practices.

If you are interested in science, have coding experience, and would enjoy working in a fast‑paced, creative environment with a bright and diverse group of colleagues and a beautiful view from our building in the Berkeley Hills, we want to hear from you!

• Work with a team to develop and maintain a broad portfolio of software projects.
• Build, refine and support API endpoints and integration to backend systems to enable automation for complex workflows.
• Troubleshoot and solve complex technical problems with other team members.
• Develop and refactor scripts and other code.
• Coordinate small project teams or other initiatives such as the rollout of a new service or system, or a major equipment or software upgrade.
• Work with vendors to prioritize efforts and enhance their technologies to meet user needs.
• Work with researchers to deploy services using Spin, our container cloud platform based on Kubernetes.
• Collaborate within NERSC and across the DOE community to develop APIs and services, integrate them into the new NERSC supercomputer Doudna, the NERSC data center environment, and across multiple DOE facilities.
• Present developments to NERSC staff and the broader HPC community at science conferences and industry meetings.

• Analyze and solve complex technical problems requiring in-depth evaluation of variable factors.
• Work at a higher level of independence while carrying out work assignments.
• Research, select, and lead the implementation of new technologies.
• Develop team strategy and project plans.
• Provide leadership and technical guidance to group members and other colleagues at NERSC.
• Recommend and lead system improvement efforts that enhance system performance, reliability, and security.
• Identify and evaluate emerging HPC technologies and features that could introduce novel capabilities or enhance existing system performance and utility.
• Represent NERSC in technical or user advocacy groups to influence the HPC and DOE community to meet user needs.

Typically, 8+ years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; alternatively, 6+ years with a Master’s degree; or equivalent career experience.

2+ years of experience with API and web services software development on Linux systems in a high-performance computing, cloud computing, or hyper‑scale environment.

Familiarity with designing and building API interfaces to compute, storage, or other backend systems.

Experience with certain or all of our key technologies:

• C, shell, and Python programming languages.
• Git, runners, and complex CI/CD pipelines.
• Using and developing AI (or machine learning) tools and services.
• Database administration and optimization (such as Mongo
  
  DB, MySQL or Postgre
  
  SQL).
• Container technology (such as Docker or Kubernetes).
• Working knowledge of software engineering best practices for performance and security.

Ability to resolve complex issues in creative and effective ways and derive technical solutions in a collaborative…