Software Engineer Athlete Research

Do you want to be a key contributor to an award-winning, open-source software project whose mission is to transform what we know about human performance? Are you interested in helping athletes of all levels, from elite to beginner, understand how to optimize performance and prevent injury? Are you a full-stack software developer eager to work with world-class researchers and engineers on simulating and analyzing human performance?

Join the Digital Athlete team as a software developer. The project is part of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford ((Use the "Apply for this Job" box below).).

At the foundation of the Digital Athlete project is our Open Sim software, a powerful and extensible software system to create and visualize simulations of human and animal movement (opensim.stanford.edu). The free and open-source software package is one of the premier biomechanics simulators, used by thousands of researchers around the world in fields ranging from robotics to biomedicine. For example, the software is used to help predict how to improve running performance, design exoskeletons to augment human performance and plan surgery for children with gait pathologies.

The underlying Open Sim API is written in C++ and the GUI is written in Java. We also have interfaces in Python and MATLAB. Your role will be to develop new tools to support the growing needs of the biomechanics and sports science communities by improving the performance and functionality of Digital Athlete software, including Open Sim.

The Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford is a university-wide research initiative, housed under the Vice Provost and Dean of Research, that leverages Stanford's exceptional research, outstanding athletics, and innovative spirit. We are creating a community that draws on diverse efforts across campus to uncover the fundamental principles of peak performance. Through our programs, we are developing the knowledge, the people, and the tools to make optimal health more accessible to all.

We hope you will join us in our mission.

Our VPDoR Diversity Journey:

• We create a hub of innovation through the power of diversity of disciplines and people.
• We provide equitable access and opportunity to all members of the community in order to do their best work, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
• We listen to and value all colleagues who bring diverse perspectives to the advancement and development of a respectful community.
• We promote a culture of belonging, equity, and safety.
• We embed these values in excellence of education, research, and operation.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The software engineer will undertake a wide variety of development projects:

• Develop a mobile application for real-time movement analysis during activities like running, jumping, and cutting.
• Create a compelling and straightforward user experience for researchers to visualize simulations of movement and create their own custom studies of movement (e.g., to predict joint loading during an athletic maneuver of interest).
• Develop a robust user experience in Python and make other improvements to facilitate uptake of our biomechanics software by the machine learning community
• Conduct software performance profiling and benchmarking to find ways to reduce computation time and push the bounds of the types of simulations that are possible.

Additional roles and details:

• Participate in Open Sim software development work at the API and GUI levels, designing and implementing new tools to support our worldwide collaborators.
• Apply professional development practices to our software, both for new code and for correcting deficiencies in old code. This includes design, documentation, testing, portability, maintainability, adherence to standards, and egoless participation in team code reviews both as subject and reviewer.
• Generate test cases/harnesses to target performance bottlenecks.
• Serve as a leader-by-example to academic programmers and Stanford doctoral students to help them learn best professional coding practices.
• Support external development teams who are using Open Sim by quickly answering questions online and in person at workshops and responding to feature requests and bug reports.
• Work with the project team to understand the various user communities served by Open Sim and match coding decisions to the needs of our users.

CORE DUTIES:

• Conceptualize design, implement, and develop solutions for complex system/programs independently.
• Work with a variety of users to gain information, and develop intra-system tradeoffs between different users, as necessary; interact with a diverse client base and outside vendor contacts.
• Document system builds and application configurations; maintain and update documentation as needed.
• Provide technical analysis, design, development, conversion, and implementation work.
• Work as a project leader, as needed, for…