The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.
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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.
We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.
If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.
Context And Mission
The Computational Social Science and Humanities Program envisions preparing the social sciences and humanities for the era of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and Exascale supercomputing. Our mission is to foster collaboration between social scientists and computer scientists, making high-performance computing (HPC) accessible to all researchers in the field. Through innovative approaches, we aim to apply social science research to contribute valuable insights for informed policymaking.
In our pursuit, we focus on a wide range of key societal research areas such as Population and Household changes, Democratic Quality, Social Media, Public Opinion and Political Communication, Equity and Welfare in Education and Labor Market, legal systems and Legislation, Social-Ecology, Science of Science, and History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage. Employing a mixed of advanced statistical models, AI/Machine Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), Social Network Analysis (SNA), high-performance computational methods are applied to a wide range of large datasets from official statistics, surveys, social media, news, laws, historical archives, current data archives, archaeology data, citizens' volunteered and web-scraping data, and public administration and industry data.
As a research and data engineer, you will play a pivotal role in facilitating the researchers’ work, working closely with the Research units at CSSH, particularly the research unit on Wellbeing and Equity and the research unit on Complexity Science and reporting to both the head of the Data and Methods group, and the projects’ IPs. A critical part of conducting scientific analysis and implementing simulations of social and economic behavior is the access to data, and particularly working with sensitive or private data. Ensuring that utility of the analysis while preserving privacy will be a key part of the computational and data engineering work to support social science research.
The funding for these actions/fellowships and contracts comes from the European Union Recovery and Resilience Facility - Next Generation, within the framework of the General Invitation by the public business entity Red.es to participate in the talent attraction and retention programs within Investment 4 of Component 19 of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan.
For more information, please check: https://www.bsc.es/join-us/excellence-career-opportunities/ai4s
"La financiación de estas actuaciones/becas y contratos, procede del Mecanismo de Recuperación y Resiliencia de la Unión Europea-Next Generation, en el marco de la Invitación General de la entidad pública empresarial Red.es para participar en los programas de atracción y retención del talento dentro de la Inversión 4 del Componente 19 del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia.
Para más información: https://www.bsc.es/join-us/excellence-career-opportunities/ai4s "
Key Duties
Assisting to computational analysis of social behavior, behavioral economics and psychology.
Developing AI/ML methods to access and analyze multi-modal social science data from national statistics, public administration and private sector.
Contributing to build statistical tools to analyze sensitive data (synthetic data/differential privacy).
Developing tools to help advance research on computational social sciences and humanities in collaboration with the Computer Science and Operations departments of the BSC-CNS.
Providing support adopting the researchers‘ code to High Performance Computing.
Requirements
Education
Computer Science Degree or equivalent.
MSc in Statistics or Computer Science or similar is highly desirable.
Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
4+ years of experience processing and/or analyzing large datasets for research purposes.
Hands-on experience with the R-statistical package and/or Python, particularly for data analysis. Ability to work in both programming languages is desirable.
Experience in the implementation of Machine Learning models.
Practical knowledge of High-Performance Computing is a plus.
Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
Fluency in English is essential. Proficiency in Spanish and other European languages would be advantageous.
Competences
Ability to work in a team and in a multi-cultural environment.
Interest and ability for independent learning, adapting and developing computational methods and research tools to answer research questions in the social sciences.
Good communication skills for effective collaboration with researchers and other research engineers and data scientists.
Interest and curiosity for advances in AI/ML, differential privacy, synthetic data applied to access and analysis of sensitive data.
Conditions
The position will be located at BSC within the Computational Social Science and Humanities Program.
We offer a full-time contract (37.5h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance.
Duration: 4 years.
Holidays: 23 paid vacation days plus 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement.
Salary: 50.000,00€.
Additional Expenses Grant: Each fellowship will be associated with a grant for additional expenses, such as IT equipment, travel, training, stays, etc.
Starting date: asap - the incorporation for this vacancy must be before the 16th of December 2024
Applications procedure and process
All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain:
A full CV in English, including contact details.
A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.
Development of the recruitment process
The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:
Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.
The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.
In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.
The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.
At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment@bsc.es.