Software Research & Development Engineer / Software Research & Development Engineeress

Join the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is a national research infrastructure specializing in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) within the ETH domain, with EPFL and ETH Zurich as founding partners. Our mission is to support academic labs, hospitals, industry, and public sector stakeholders—including cantonal and federal administrations—throughout their entire data science journey, from data collection and management to machine learning, AI, and industrialization.

With a diverse team of professionals across three locations—Lausanne, Zurich, and Villigen—the SDSC provides expertise and services across various domains, including health and biomedical sciences, energy and sustainability, climate and environment, and large-scale scientific infrastructures.

Position: Software Research & Development Engineer

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is seeking a talented Software Research & Development Engineer to join its project-based engineering team in Zürich. This dynamic team focuses on transforming research outcomes into production-ready data science infrastructure, operating in a complementary role to platform teams by exploring, building, and validating solutions prior to their adoption as sustainable services.

Key Responsibilities

You will work at the intersection of research and engineering, transforming early-stage ideas, prototypes, and emerging solutions into reusable systems ready for real-world deployment. Your contributions will adhere to the FAIR principles while ensuring usability, scalability, and sustainability in practice.

• Engage in focused exploration and prototyping in early project phases, shaping solution spaces, testing approaches, and making technical choices.
• Contribute to Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development as projects mature, building operational, reusable components for production environments.
• Collaborate with engineers across the stack to build end-to-end solutions, focusing primarily on backend, data, and infrastructure components.
• Ensure continuity beyond the project lifecycle by working closely with internal platform teams and partner IT units.
• Co-design solutions with users and domain experts through collaborative workshops, iteratively refining requirements into robust implementations.

Qualifications

We welcome candidates across different levels of experience; whether you are early in your career or already seasoned, your approach to problem-solving and collaboration is what matters most.

• A background in software engineering, data engineering, or a related field, with a solid foundation typically acquired through a Master’s degree or higher (e.g., PhD) in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• Comfortable working at the interface between teams, bridging research, engineering, and operations successfully.
• Familiarity with modern software and data engineering practices, such as version control, testing, APIs, and data pipelines, is an advantage.
• Exposure to data modelling or semantic interoperability (e.g., ontologies, common data models) is a plus.

What We Offer

• A stimulating, collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment in a world-class research institution.
• Flexible work arrangements.
• Exciting challenges, varied projects, and abundant opportunities for learning and growth.
• An opportunity to utilize your skills to make an impactful contribution to research communities and society.
• A chance to spark your creativity by experimenting with and learning new technologies.

We encourage you to apply online using the form below. Please note that only applications matching the job profile will be considered.

Further information about SDSC can be found on our website. For questions regarding the position, you may contact Oksana Riba Grognuz at oksana.riba@epfl.ch (please refrain from sending applications via email).

We look forward to your application!