Senior Research Software Engineering Lead

Job Purpose

Are you an experienced Research Software Engineer who thrives on solving complex problems through hands-on development and technical leadership? The Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) is seeking a Senior RSE Lead to play a central role in designing and delivering innovative software and data science solutions that unlock the potential of urban data for research, policy, and public impact. This is a strategic yet technical role, ideal for someone who enjoys collaborating with researchers and end-users, architecting systems, and building tools that make complex datasets accessible, interactive, and actionable.

As Senior RSE Lead, you will be responsible for the end-to-end development of robust data analytics pipelines, scalable applications, and intuitive user interfaces. You will work directly with interdisciplinary teams of researchers, data scientists, and external partners to co-create impactful solutions that support data-intensive social research. Your work will span the full software lifecycle—from requirements gathering and design to implementation, testing, and deployment—ensuring that research outputs are reproducible, user-focused, and technically sound. You will also contribute to the design of research projects and funding proposals, embedding software engineering expertise into the heart of UBDC’s strategy.

In addition to your technical contributions, you will provide leadership, mentoring, and coordination to a small team of technicians based at UBDC. You will foster a collaborative and inclusive working environment, ensuring high-quality software and support services to the UBDC research community. You will also act as a key liaison with infrastructure providers, helping researchers make optimal use of high-performance computing resources, including cloud platforms and university infrastructure services.

This is a unique opportunity to join a mission-driven organisation that values innovation, technical excellence, and real-world impact. At UBDC, you’ll be part of a dynamic environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and continuous learning. You will also be associated with a team of Research Software Engineers working across the University through a close relationship with the university-wide Research Computing as a Service.

We’re looking for someone who thrives in a fast-paced research setting, has demonstrated project management and initial leadership experience, combines this with solid software engineering skills, and is excited to contribute to meaningful societal change through thoughtful, user-focused software engineering.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide leadership in research software engineering, and data science services managed and delivered by the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC), planning, managing and delivering technical services to facilitate the outcomes of the University of Glasgow’s world changing research agenda.
• Develop and refine a strategic vision and operational plans, including policies and procedures, for the delivery of UBDC projects and services.
• Apply and direct the use of state-of-the-art novel software engineering (including agile project management, data science and artificial intelligence) to address challenges faced by University of Glasgow researchers.
• Liaise with UBDC and external researchers, administrators, and end-user stakeholders to capture requirements and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Document developed systems and provide training, client manuals, and technical workshops as needed.
• Present, disseminate and explain the work of UBDC via presentations, reports and well-documented software packages.
• Support research colleagues to access and make the most of external cloud providers and University of Glasgow’s research computing infrastructure services, including provisions for high-performance computing and research data management services.
• Make a significant expert contribution to major funding bids, internal business cases and related activities where social research software engineering is a core dimension.
• Provide technical project management and leadership for multiple concurrent projects, liaising with clients and colleagues to understand and prioritise project goals, balancing the value of contribution with limitations on team resources.
• Provide line management for a small group of staff within the UBDC Research Engineering team, supporting their performance and development, and managing workload allocations.
• Support and contribute to open research, such as by applying FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles of research data and tools.

Knowledge, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Knowledge/Qualifications

Essential:

• Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework level 9, 10 or 11 (Ordinary/Honours Degree, Post Graduate Qualification), or equivalent including being professionally qualified in relevant discipline, with a broad range of professional experience in management role(s), OR Ability to demonstrate the competencies required to undertake the duties associated with this level of post, having acquired the necessary professional knowledge and management skills in a similar or a number of different specialist roles.
• Strong programming skills in more than one modern programming language used in research (typically Python, R, JavaScript/React/Next.js, Node)
• Excellent understanding of best practices in project management for producing reliable software and reproducible analyses, including agile project management, version control, issue and backlog tracking, automated testing and package management.
• Expert knowledge of software engineering techniques for designing, developing, deploying and maintaining production-ready web systems.
• Excellent knowledge of software tools and computational resources associated with multiple research disciplines.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work in interdisciplinary teams.

Desirable:

• Knowledge of geospatial data structures and visualisation tools.
• Skills in user-centred design, including working with collaborative design software such as Figma or Adobe Creative Suite.
• Familiarity with SCRUM project management, including backlog tracking and sprint planning.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and containerisation/orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).