Research Programmer III- Machine Learning & Computational Neuroscience, Kennedy Lab

POSITION TITLE: Research Programmer III (Software Engineer)

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Kennedy laboratory is involved in numerous projects to track, quantify, and forecast individual and group behavior and relate it to recorded neural activity. We develop new computational methods to understand how agents (animals, humans, virtual) gather information about their sensory environment, integrate this with internal motivational needs, and execute goal-directed actions in complex, naturalistic environments. We also develop machine learning and computer vision platforms for high-throughput animal phenotyping, with the goal of accelerating drug screening and repurposing efforts at Scripps.

We seek motivated individuals interested in gaining hands-on experience in scientific research projects, with a goal of contributing to scientific papers and participating in an active lab environment. You will also have the opportunity to lead independent research projects on existing datasets from our collaborators (U Penn, UCLA, Harvard, U Utah, Northwestern, and others). This is an ideal position for applicants interested in building their scientific CV ahead of applying to graduate programs in Computational Neuroscience or Machine Learning, or those looking for a longer term position where they can contribute to original scientific research and model development.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, Applied Math, or related field, or an equivalent combination of education, training and/or experience. Other STEM degrees may be accepted if accompanied with programming education, training, and/or experience.


• Minimum of four years experience in software application development or research programming.


• Experience with software development in Python.


• Experience building and training deep neural networks for supervised, unsupervised, or reinforcement learning problems.


• A demonstrated ability to apply the fundamentals of software application development.


• Experience with version control, including git and github.

Please include code samples and/or a link to a public code repository with examples of your work.

PREFERRED SKILLSET:

Prior experience with the one or more of the following is preferred:

• Experience with sequence/time series data, control/reinforcement learning problems and environments, time series forecasting.


• An understanding of generative modeling (hidden Markov models, diffusion models, etc).


• Familiarity with topics in motor control, robotics, and neuroscience.

As a member of a computational lab working in team projects, the following general skills are also preferred:

• Experience developing scalable system architectures that adhere to good software engineering principles.


• Ability to tackle large, open-ended research questions independently and as part of a team.


• Willingness to be an active participant in a computational lab environment, including taking part in lab meetings, journal clubs, and hackathons.


• Experience working within a diverse, interdisciplinary team.


• Experience contributing to open source software projects.

LOCATION: La Jolla, California.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:  This position works in an office environment, and it is expected that work will be primarily performed in-person.

COMPENSTAION:

The expected hiring range for this position is $75,000 to $100,000 per year, commensurate with experience.

COMPREHENSIVE BENEFITS INCLUDE: