Research Software Engineer (Automation and DevOps) - IT Services - 102683 - Grade 7 in Birmingham

• Position Details
• IT Services

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £36,636 to £46,049 with potential progression once in post to £48,822

• Grade: 7
• Full Time, Permanent
• Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university.

We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector‑leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential.

With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide‑range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate.

We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements.

We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working.

In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme.

We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site.

On campus we have a state‑of‑the‑art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham.

Background

The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City, offering an inspiring education to our students, and undertaking critically important research.

We are a place of open, critical thinking, and the creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge.

Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience.

They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally, nationally, and globally.

They ensure the University’s resources are used wisely, manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution, and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence.

Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University, supporting colleagues to network and collaborate, offering opportunities to learn and develop, contributing to the delivery of the University’s objectives, and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.

Department overview

The Advanced Research Computing team (ARC) delivers a suite of computing services to enable world‑class research under the name of the Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR).

Focused on the application layer, the post holder will contribute to initiatives in all areas of service innovation and delivery (including HPC, HTC, data analytics, image rendering and visualisation) enabling researchers to fully exploit the compute power of BEAR.

The services support research across the entire spectrum of academic endeavour at Birmingham from Music to Medicine, Computer Science to Theology, Physics to English, Economics to Climatology.

ARC also operates the multi‑million pound UKRI‑funded Baskerville NCR accelerated compute system.

BEAR uses complex, large‑scale architectures based on Unix, Linux, Openstack and enterprise class storage infrastructures.

These need to be configured and maintained to the highest standards of reliability, performance and quality.

Business continuity and high service levels are demanded for mission‑critical corporate services and for those supporting the core activities of research, teaching and learning.

Underpinning and supporting these headline BEAR services are a collection of web applications and supporting Python libraries that integrate with and control aspects of the headline services.

We also integrate with various information systems in the wider IT Services to automate processes wherever practical.

Individuals working in ARC need to be resourceful, innovative and attuned to the research process.

Role Summary

The Research Software Engineer (Dev Ops and Automation) plays a key role in developing and improving the systems, tooling, and automation that underpin BEAR services.

Working within the BEAR Apps team as part of wider ARC, you will design, develop, and maintain software and infrastructure used to operate services supporting research and scientific computing across the University.

The role focuses on improving automation, reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency across our platforms and workflows.

You will work collaboratively with developers, infrastructure specialists, and researchers to solve technical problems and continuously improve the quality and sustainability of our services.

This is an opportunity to contribute to technical decisions, shape engineering practices, and work on meaningful systems that directly support real‑world research.

Main Duties

• Develop and maintain web applications underpinning key BEAR and Baskerville NCR services.
• Develop and maintain Python‑based middleware and integration libraries used to automate, coordinate, and manage aspects of BEAR and Baskerville NCR services.
• When new services or capabilities are required, contribute to the technical design, implementation, and integration of solutions in collaboration with colleagues across the team.
• Deploy and maintain applications and services running on BEAR Cloud virtual machine infrastructure.
• Develop and improve automated workflows and integrations across systems and services within ARC (e. g. Git Lab) and the wider IT Services ecosystem (e. g. Service Now).
• Contribute to the continual improvement of testing practices, automation, and continuous integration (CI) pipelines to support reliable software delivery.
• Work collaboratively with senior colleagues to prioritise and plan development activities. Support effective task coordination and maintain good communication across the team.
• Participate in peer code review activities, helping to maintain software quality, consistency, and good engineering practices across projects.
• Respond to user support requests relating to these systems, investigating and resolving incidents and technical issues in collaboration with researchers and infrastructure colleagues.
• Participate in a shared BEAR triage rota, helping to categorise and direct operational issues and service requests to the appropriate teams.

Improve and further automate these processes as appropriate.

• Participate in the BEAR housekeeping rota, helping to resolve user and project metadata issues and archive BEAR projects.

Improve and further automate these processes as appropriate.

• Fosters a fair and equitable workplace for all staff.
• Identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant university policies and procedures.
• Other relevant criteria from our equality and diversity duties document.
• Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
• Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
• Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
• Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) or relevant technical qualification and considerable relevant experience.

Where no equivalent qualification is held, significant practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of more demanding roles will be required demonstrating the conceptual understanding required.

• Python software‑engineering skills, with experience designing, building, and/or maintaining reliable software.
• Comfortable developing and deploying software in Linux environments.
• Experience using version control workflows collaboratively (e. g. Git).
• Experience using modern software delivery practices, including CI/CD.
• Ability to decide what processes to automate and how, and where a “human in the loop” is required.
• Demonstrated ability to investigate complex technical issues, work effectively across unfamiliar systems, and deliver pragmatic, robust solutions.
• Proven ability to take ownership of technical tasks and deliver work independently while collaborating effectively with a wider team.
• Proven ability to work effectively with users, stakeholders (or similar) to understand requirements and deliver solutions.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral.
• A self‑motivated learner with a track record of continually updating skills.
• Ability to manage and prioritise workload effectively with an appropriate level of supervision.
• Evidence of literacy and numeracy.
• GCSEs to a minimum of grade C/4 in English and Mathematics (or equivalent qualifications).
• Knowledge of the protected characteristics and duties under the Equality Act 2010.

Including fostering good relations and advancing the universities Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

• Other relevant criteria from our equality and diversity knowledge, skills and experience document.

Desirable

• Experience of working on medium to large codebases.
• Experience supporting live services running on Linux.
• Experience writing automated tests and maintaining software quality.
• Familiarity with testing practices such as unit, integration, and functional testing.
• Experience of developing APIs and/or API client software.
• Experience designing and developing database‑backed applications and services.
• Experience of developing Django applications.
• Experience with container technologies (e. g. Docker, Apptainer, or similar).
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code approaches and configuration management tools (e. g. Ansible, Salt Stack).
• Experience participating in collaborative code review and maintaining high engineering standards.
• Knowledge of Higher Education, Research and High‑Performance‑Computing (HPC).
• Company culture statements

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life.

We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations.

We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.

We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy.

You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.

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