Argonne
Assistant Software Engineer - Autonomous Discovery Platforms (MADSCi)
Lemont, IL USA · Contract
Sponsorship not specified$94k-$147kDetected 22 days ago
TypeScriptPythonVue.jsDjangoFastAPIFlaskCode ReviewGitPostgreSQLMongoDBDockerCI/CDAPI DevelopmentRESTMachine LearningData EngineeringData ScienceAI OrchestrationA/B TestingRoboticsControlsTest AutomationResearchExperimental Design
About the role
- It integrates instruments, robots, AI/ML decision agents, and data pipelines into reproducible, closed-loop scientific experiments at scales and speeds that exceed traditional human-led methods.
- Please note that the pay range information is a general guideline only.
Responsibilities
- Own the architecture of a Python microservices system spanning workflow orchestration, resource and inventory tracking, distributed event logging, experiment management, and device integration.
- Collaborate with experimental scientists and robotics engineers to onboard new instruments, design experiment workflows, and translate scientific goals into robust software abstractions.
- Maintain and grow the contributor community, including external collaborators at other DOE laboratories, universities, and industrial partners.
- Operate and improve production deployments of MADSci in active autonomous laboratories at Argonne, including monitoring, observability (OpenTelemetry), backups, migrations, and on-call support during experimental campaigns.
Requirements
- RD2: Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of experience or Master's and 3+ years in computer science, or a PhD and 0+ years in software engineering, a related computational discipline
- Demonstrated proficiency in modern Python (3.10+), including type-annotated code, packaging, and testing
- Practical experience designing and maintaining production-quality software: version control (Git/GitHub), code review, automated testing, CI/CD, semantic versioning, and structured release management
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write clear technical documentation for both developer and end-user audiences
- Ability to model Argonne's core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity and teamwork
Nice to have
- Software engineering depth
- Experience designing microservice or service-oriented systems, including service discovery, schema management, and inter-service communication patterns
- Hands-on experience with Pydantic v2, SQLModel/SQLAlchemy, or comparable typed-data and ORM frameworks
- Experience maintaining a multi-package monorepo (e.g., PDM, uv, Poetry workspaces) with shared types and coordinated releases
- Experience with observability tooling: OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, structured logging, metrics dashboards
- Experience as a maintainer of an open-source project, including triaging external issues, reviewing community contributions, and managing a public roadmap
- Familiarity with frontend development (Vue 3, TypeScript) sufficient to coordinate with frontend collaborators on dashboard and TUI features
- Robotics, lab automation, and self-driving labs
Skills
- MADSci is the software backbone of Argonne's Autonomous Discovery initiative.
- include:
Compensation
- Please note that the pay range information is a general guideline only.
Benefits
- Experience building or operating a self-driving laboratory, autonomous experimentation platform, or closed-loop active-learning workflow, in academia, a national lab, or industry
- Experience with AI/ML for experimental design (Bayesian optimization, active learning, surrogate models)
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This listing is sourced directly from Argonne's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.