Software Developer (Full Stack)

Position Title:          Software Developer (Full Stack)

Employment Type:  2-Year, Fixed Term, Full-Time

Salary Level:           HEW 7 or 8 equivalent

About QCIF

The Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF) is a non-profit organisation that provides cutting-edge digital infrastructure capabilities for research and innovation across Queensland and Australia. QCIF draws investment from its Members, the Queensland Government, and the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) program. We are an NCRIS node for the Australian BioCommons (Bioplatforms Australia), and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and its Nectar Research Cloud.

Our purpose   

To provide cutting-edge digital research infrastructure to our Members.

Our vision   

To be the digital research partner of choice for our Members, collaborators and clients.

Our mission   

To accelerate research excellence and societal impact through our Members by:

• Provisioning cutting-edge digital research infrastructure capabilities and enterprise solutions;
• Upskilling current and future researchers and innovators; and
• Catalysing collaboration within Queensland and across Australia.

Our values    

• Excellence — we stand by the quality and integrity of our contributions to research;
• Collaboration — we believe teams are best placed to tackle the grand challenges that confront society; and
• Entrepreneurial — we do not wait for opportunities to come to us; we make things happen.

About the Role

Technical delivery for designing, building, and maintaining optimised and highly available data infrastructure, pipelines, and workflows that facilitate data management, data analytics, and modelling solutions. The role plans, designs, develops, deploys, and administers frameworks and architectural approaches that scale to handle user demands.

This is a hands-on role which requires technical expertise to deliver data and analytical services including data ingestion, transformation, storage, dashboarding, and model execution.  The role strives to continuously develop new and improved data engineering and operations capabilities.

The incumbent may exclusively support major projects or programs such as EcoCommons Australia.

About EcoCommons

The EcoCommons Australia platform is a culmination of a thirteen-year national investment worth $8.45M across multiple partners, positioning the nation for research with impact through effective leveraging of eco-data and eco-analytics. EcoCommons currently provides access to over 60,000 curated datasets—on species, environment and climate—and dynamically updated data-streams through API with major national and international biodiversity data providers. The Platform's existing capabilities span modelling geographic distribution of single/multiple species (land, freshwater or oceans) and species traits, based on environmental features and historical, current, or projected future climates.

Software development will look to mature the existing Platform capabilities and operation of EcoCommons Australia and continue alignment with ARDC’s Planet Research Data Commons (Planet RDC) for biodiversity and ecological modelling, specifically under the Modelling, Analytics and Decision Support Infrastructure Program (MADSI).

Key responsibilities

• Scope, analyse, design, develop, test, deploy, document, and support software solutions (e.g. scripts, programs, workflows or RESTful web services).
• Install, modify, optimise and integrate applications, middleware, user interfaces and other software.
• Design, develop, deploy and maintain infrastructure to increase data and model findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability.
• Design, develop, deploy and maintain scalable OpenStack cloud-based solutions, analytical tools, programs, and interfaces.
• Deploy and configure software stacks for data ETL, management and analytics and execution of models.
• Evaluate and implement processes and systems for data lineage, integration and quality and tools to support increases in data volume and complexity.
• Write unit/integration tests and contribute to engineering documentation.
• Take shared ownership of complex problems and issues to resolve them within the agreed timeframes.
• Report on progress against project tasks and milestones.
• Contribute to the development and delivery of training programs.
• Interface with stakeholders to manage expectations and ensure satisfaction.
• Work closely and actively communicate with a team of developers, product/project/program managers, and analysts.
• Capture requirements and develop proposals with collaborators.
• Develop and adapt software architectures to support proposed and operational software platforms.
• Contribute to strategy for long term platform architecture.
• Be aware of security considerations and implementation of security best practices.

About you

Essential qualifications and experience

• A Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or Information Technology with a major in information systems, software engineering or a related discipline with at least 7 years of experience or an equivalent combination of relevant experience and/or education/training.
• Practical skills in software engineering and scripting languages (Python, R, Javascript, Perl, shell, etc.) including desktop and web-based platform development.
• Practical skills and experience in design, delivery, and operation of complex systems and platforms.
• Experience with automated testing and CI/CD technologies and approaches.
• Experience with Agile development and management methodologies.
• Practical skills in designing and implementing ETL systems.
• High level of creative thinking capability and excellent interpersonal skills including the ability to communicate effectively with project/program partners.
• Ability to prioritise own workload, work independently and meet deadlines.

Desirable qualifications and experience

• Experience with ecological and/or agricultural sciences and related modelling; working with geospatial data.
• Practical skills and experience designing and developing workflow driven platforms and frameworks.
• Knowledge and experience in the use and management of Linux systems in a Cloud environment. OpenStack experience.
• Experience in working with relational and non-relational databases and the design of data models; improving system operations, delivery and management of large datasets, data integrity and quality.
• Skills and experience in one or more of cybersecurity; front end frameworks (e.g. ReactJS); developing service APIs; Kubernetes/Containerisation; and DevOps/DevSecOps.

Organisational Relationships

The position reports to Head of Data & Software Solutions. The incumbent will receive priority and workplans from project/program leads.

Location

• The role will work from one of the QCIF offices in Brisbane.
  Applicants outside the greater Brisbane region must be willing to relocate.
• Flexible working arrangements may be negotiated.
• This position may be hosted by one of QCIF’s Member universities. Details about QCIF can be found here http://qcif.edu.au

Working Rights

Applicants must have valid rights to work full time in Australia. QCIF will not sponsor applicants for this role. Applicants who do not have valid working rights need not apply.

How to apply?

Please provide a:

• Cover letter addressing the essential and desirable qualifications and experience
• CV with at least two professional referees

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.