Senior Software Engineer

Competition 1213

This competition is restricted to internal applicants of the University of Alberta. Please log in to verify your internal candidate status.

This position is a part of the Non-Academic Staff Association (NASA).

This position has a term length of one year plus a day and offers a comprehensive benefits package which can be viewed on our Benefits Overview page.

Location - Work primarily takes place at North Campus, Edmonton. This role is hybrid with a mix of remote and in-person.

Working at the University of Alberta

The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the histories, languages and cultures of First Nations, Métis, Inuit and all FirstPeoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community.

The University of Alberta is a community of knowledge seekers, change makers and world shapers who lead with purpose each and every day. We are home to over 14,000 faculty and staff, more than 40,000 students and a growing community of 300,000 alumni worldwide.

Your work will have a meaningful influence on a fascinating cross-section of people — from our students and community members, to our renowned researchers and innovators, making discoveries and generating solutions that make the world healthier, safer, stronger and more just. Learn more.

Working for the Department

Founded in 1964, the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta is the oldest and one of the largest computing science departments in Canada. We have an international reputation for contributions in the many fields of computing, both in foundations and applications

Position 

The ideal candidate will be working on three different projects.

• Two are in support of research activities funded by Dr. Stroulia’s Bridging-Divides project: (i) the data observatory, and (ii) the immigrant’s companion app.
• The third involves the development of an expert-finder interface on the OpenAlex data, in the context of the AIMS project, led by Dr. Stroulia in her capacity as Provost’s Fellow.

Duties 

The Bridging Divides projects:

• (1 day) The Observatory is a platform that enables researchers to study immigration discourse in a real-time environment using AI methods. The platform will enable researchers to ingest datasets, including news, social media, and short documents around immigration; analyze the data to extract discourse themes and communities of similar-minded participants; and examine the evolution of the discourse over time.
• (2 days) The immigrant’s companion is a chatbot enabling users to describe their context and needs to receive recommendations of services available to them. The app will train a language model with information from websites offering services for immigrants to support the chatbot.
• The AIMS project:
  • (2 days) The third activity involves the development of researcher profiles for UofA researchers based on OpenAlex data, and a user interface to enable users to identify experts in an area; teams of collaborating experts in an area; high-impact research areas; etc. Each of these three tasks is challenging and involves a variety of technologies.
• The ideal candidate will be responsible for
  • Choosing the right technologies
  • Developing the software necessary to accomplish each task
  • Evaluate it through thorough testing 
  • Communicate it and validate it in collaboration with our external partners, including the UofA BridgingDivides team (for the first two tasks) and the PAIR team working on OpenAlex data (for the third task)

Minimum Qualifications

• Previous real-world experience as a software developer (preferably for two years or more)
• BSc in Computer Science
• Documented coursework in Software Engineering, Machine learning, Algorithms & data structures, AI, Web Development
• Hands-on experience with as many of the following software tools and libraries as possible: D3JS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, Webpack, Generative AI tools, Unreal, Unity, C#, Python, PyTorch, Pandas, NumPy, TensorFlow, React, TypeScript, MaterialUI, Redux, Django, Heroku, Ruby on Rails.
• Must have experience with Linux server administration and container technologies like Docker
• Must have experience with testing environments
• Must have experience with auxiliary development tools such as modern IDEs, code repositories, collaborative software development tools, and the Unix command line.

Preferred Qualifications

•  MSc in Computer Science preferred