Software Engineer, Data Scientist

Job Description

Columbia Basin Research has an outstanding opportunity for a Software Engineer to join their team.

The Software Engineer will work with a small team of statisticians at Columbia Basin Research (C ;(Use the "Apply for this Job" box below). .washington.edu). C  is a research center within the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, College of the Environment, University of Washington. C  conducts basic and applied research on the impacts of regulated river operations on the freshwater and marine survival of salmon in a changing environment.

As part of its mission, C  develops desktop and web-based applications (https:// .washington.edu/analysis) to perform statistical analyses relevant to fish, dam, water, and natural resource management.

The Software Engineer will play a lead role in the development and maintenance of desktop applications to implement statistical analysis for effective monitoring and research related to salmon survival and migration in tributaries, past dams, and in the marine environment. These analysis tools are used by researchers and managers throughout the Columbia River Basin and California’s Central Delta to design field studies of salmon and steelhead migration and analyze the resulting tagging data.

The Software Engineer will also be instrumental in redeveloping, implementing, and maintaining a web-based application to forecast salmon run-timing from a long time series of past migration data combined with data from the current migration season (“in-season forecasts”). These forecasts are used by managers of hydroelectric projects to schedule their dam operations throughout the year to protect endangered salmon and steelhead, while also providing visualizations of salmon populations’ response to hatchery practices and climate change.

This position offers great opportunities for professional and personal growth in a stimulating research environment on applied ecology and endangered salmon and steelhead.

The position’s major duties and responsibilities include: (1) developing and maintaining desktop applications to implement statistical analyses, including back-end, user interface, and data storage; (2) redeveloping, implementing, and maintaining a web-based application of in-season forecasts of salmon runs; (3) working with internal databases; and (4) interfacing with statisticians to develop software to analyze complex environmental data in a user-friendly computing environment.

• Collaborate with statisticians in the design, development, debugging, documentation, and maintenance of a suite of statistical applications for design and analysis of salmonid survival studies, including the Parameter Estimation programs on the Tools webpage.
• Design, develop, implement, and document user-friendly interfaces for the statistical applications, programs, and tools. Primary programming languages: C#, C/C++, and Python. Primary UI frameworks: XAML, Qt.
• Maintain best practices programming with source control (Git), issues tracking (Git), unit testing, test plans, quality assurance applications (C#, R statistical package), and release testing.
• Backup all statistical tools and programs.

• Implement and maintain web-based application of in-season forecasts of salmon runs on the C  Predictions webpage.
• Collaborate with statisticians to redevelop in-season forecasts to use AI approaches such as machine learning or neural networks; implement and test online against existing forecasts.
• Work with internal relational databases using SQL.

• Analyze tagging data using a combination of Python, SQL, and R.

• Provide support to the public and to the fisheries community in the Pacific Northwest, which includes members of local, state, and federal government agencies, First Nations and Tribes, environmental organizations, and consulting organizations. Provide instruction on the use of our programs in training sessions to fisheries community.

• Keep up to date on advancements in scientific…