Software Research & Development Engineer / Software Research & Development Engineeress

Join the Swiss Data Science Center

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is a national research infrastructure in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) within the ETH domain, co-founded by EPFL and ETH Zurich. Our mission is to support academic labs, hospitals, industries, and public sector stakeholders—including cantonal and federal administrations—throughout their data science journey, from data collection and management to machine learning, AI, and industrialization. With a large multidisciplinary team operating across three locations (Lausanne, Zurich, Villigen), we provide expertise and services across various domains such as health and biomedical sciences, energy and sustainability, climate and environment, and large-scale scientific infrastructures.

About the Role

The SDSC is hiring a Software Research & Development Engineer to join its project-based engineering team in Zurich. This team focuses on transforming research outcomes into production-ready data science infrastructure. It serves a complementary role to platform teams by exploring, building, and validating solutions before they are adopted as sustainable services.

Your Responsibilities

You will work at the intersection of research and engineering, turning early-stage ideas, prototypes, and emerging solutions into reusable systems ready for real-world deployment. This role demands alignment with FAIR principles, ensuring that what is FAIR is also usable, scalable, and sustainable in practice. Projects will be driven by specific needs across several domains, including:

• Health and Biomedical Sciences
• Climate and Environment
• Energy and Sustainability
• Digital Society
• Large-Scale Data Ecosystems

Your contributions will evolve through two complementary modes:

• Engaging in focused exploration and prototyping in early phases, shaping solution spaces, testing approaches, and making technical choices.
• Contributing to Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development as projects mature, building operational, reusable components for production environments.

You will collaborate with engineers across the stack to build end-to-end solutions, primarily focusing on backend, data, and infrastructure components, while occasionally supporting lightweight user-facing elements. A critical part of the role is ensuring continuity beyond the project lifecycle. You will work closely with internal platform teams and partner IT units to transition successful MVPs into production, ensuring they are maintainable, transferable, and ready for operational use.

Across all phases, you will co-design solutions with users and domain experts, participate in collaborative workshops, and iteratively refine requirements into robust implementations. Our work adheres to established engineering and data best practices, emphasizing reproducibility, maintainability, interoperability, and production readiness.

Who We Are Looking For

We welcome candidates with varying levels of experience; whether you are early in your career or already experienced, what matters most is your problem-solving approach and collaborative spirit. You should enjoy building functional systems, navigating ambiguity, engaging with stakeholders, and iterating towards effective solutions. Key qualifications include:

• A strong foundation in software or data engineering, typically developed through a Master's degree or higher (e.g., PhD) in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Experience with modern software and data engineering practices such as version control, testing, APIs, data pipelines, containerization, and reproducible workflows (e.g., Docker, CI/CD, Nix).
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Go, Rust, or similar.
• Experience with data modeling or semantic interoperability (e.g., ontologies, common data models) is a plus.

Most importantly, you should be comfortable working at the interface between teams, bridging research, engineering, and operations, ensuring what is built can be successfully adopted and sustained.

What We Offer

• A stimulating, collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment in a world-class research institution.
• Flexible work arrangements.
• Exciting challenges, varied projects, and ample opportunities to learn and grow.
• The chance to follow your passion and leverage your skills to make an impact on research communities and society.
• An opportunity to ignite your creativity by experimenting with new technologies.

Apply online using the form below. Only applications matching the job profile will be considered.

Further Inquiries

For any questions regarding the position, please reach out to Oksana Riba Grognuz at oksana.riba@epfl.ch (no applications).

For additional information about the Swiss Data Science Center, please visit our website.