Research Software Engineer; Part Time

# Research Software Engineer (Part Time, Fixed Term)
UUniversity of CambridgeCB2 1TN
via University of Cambridge Posted 22 Sep 2026

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The funds for this post are available for 5 years in the first instance. If additional funding is acquired, extension may be possible.

The Institute of Astronomy (IoA) and the co-located, interdepartmental Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge (KICC) at Cambridge University are internationally renowned for a uniquely stimulating and multi-disciplinary research environment. One topic where Cambridge has a long history is black holes, the most extreme environments in nature, and laboratories where strong gravity, plasma physics and high-energy astro(particle)/physical processes meet. The research group of Prof.

Sera Markoff (Plumian Professor) studies these systems across the full black hole mass scale, combining GPU-accelerated supercomputer simulations and semi-analytic modelling with data from world-leading facilities including the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Her group sits at the nexus of several international efforts: a growing Cambridge node, where this post is based (currently expanding over the coming years into a fully-fledged team of students and postdocs);

an established group at the University of Amsterdam of several postdocs and students; her ongoing ERC Synergy Grant project 'Black holistic', with partner groups at Oxford, Radboud University in Nijmegen, the University of Turku, the University of Namibia and the University of South Africa; and major international collaborations including the EHT and the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). Via the ERC project, the group is also involved in commissioning a new 14-metre radio telescope in Namibia, the Africa Millimetre Telescope.

The group's research is built on a developing portfolio of in-house software: a GPU-accelerated general-relativistic magneto hydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulation code (in C, with GPU acceleration primarily on NVIDIA and AMD hardware); a GR ray-tracing code (in Julia) that produces images and spectra from those simulations, and is designed to conduct Bayesian parameter inference; semi-analytic jet and accretion modelling codes (in C++, with a Python interface) that are being integrated into the open-source Gammapy framework for use across the CTAO community and beyond;

and increasingly building on other imaging and analysis frameworks used within the EHT Collaboration. These codes run on local, national and international high-performance computing (HPC) facilities.

This part-time 0.5 FTE Research Software Engineer (RSE) role will provide the professional software engineering capability at the centre of this network and will suit someone excited to work at the interface between modern software engineering and some of the most cutting-edge research in astrophysics.

The role-holder will establish and manage version-controlled repositories for all group software, deploy and optimise the codes on available HPC facilities, and embed good software practice across a distributed, international team through documentation, testing, code review and training. The role has a strong outward-facing dimension: coordinating shared code development with partner institutions and contributing the group's codes to community open-source frameworks used by international collaborations.

The purpose of the role is to ensure that the group's research software is reliable, performant, well-documented and reproducible; that development remains coordinated with partner groups as shared codes evolve; and that software engineering expertise is retained within the group as projects and personnel change. The role also offers clear scope for growth: the role-holder will be…