Senior Software Engineer (One Year Term)

About us:

The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada's leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs.

We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world.

The Department of Physics is part of a dynamic academic community offering programs and courses to undergraduate and graduate students. We provide a comprehensive set of fundamental tools that can be brought to bear on many problems across a variety of fields. With world-class laboratories and outstanding faculty, the department fosters an in-depth understanding of an extremely diverse array of systems. Situated in the heart of downtown Toronto, our department is affiliated with various departments, institutes and research organizations, providing a broad network for our staff and students.


Your opportunity:

Reporting to the Principle Investigator and under the general guidance of the Chief Administrative Officer, this position will support the Collaborative Platform for CanESM (CP4C) project, which aims to make software related to the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM) of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) usable by a broad research community.

The position will involve making CanESM more portable and applicable on a range of computing platforms supported by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC). They will be supervised by Dr. Paul Kushner at the University of Toronto and provide technical support to a team of collaborators across Canada. They will report to Dr. Kushner and the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of CP4C.

Their primary responsibility will be to port CanESM across several DRAC platforms, and then to test, optimize, build analysis tools for, and support scientific research with CanESM.

This responsibility extends to user support, to the development of training materials and to organizing learning opportunities in the form of workshops and hackathons for the CP4Ccommunity. Some travel will be expected to universities partnering in CP4C and to the offices of ECCC.

They will be responsible for communications, outreach, and short-term (monthly) planning concerning the CP4C project.

This is a one-year term position with the possibility of renewal.


Your responsibilities will include:

• Undertaking and maintaining the port and documentation of CanESM to multiple DRAC platforms, including testing, quality assurance, and documentation.
• Developing a cloud-based running and analysis environment under CP4C to ease cross-platform use of CanESM at different institutions.
• Assisting with the setup and testing of new configurations of CanESM and, to a limited extent, support of new scientific applications of CanESM.
• Organizing and running CP4C workshops and tutorials, with assistance of the broader CP4C community, and documenting project status on theCP4C's gitlab website and repository.
• Assisting with the transfer of CanESM development under CP4C back to Environment and Climate Change Canada, following well defined software engineering standards.
• Assisting the technical research group activities of Dr. Kushner's group at the University of Toronto, including model activities extending beyond CanESM.
• Regularly reporting status and progress to Dr. Kushner, the Scientific Steering Committee of the CP4C, and ECCC management.

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in physical, mathematical, and computer sciences or an acceptable combination of equivalent experience and education. Master's Degree in physical, mathematical, and computer sciences, including climate and atmospheric science, physics, applied mathematics, software engineering strongly preferred.
• Minimum five years of recent and relevant experience in advanced research computing applications in supportof scientific research, including advanced research computer platform experience, porting experience, and the ability to deal with a wide range of programming and scripting languages. Graduate level training could potentially contribute to this experience.
• Experience using Earth system models or similarly complex tools of scientific computing, including an interest in their structure, applicability, extension into new applications, and optimization.
• Experience using, modifying, and analyzing experiments with one or more earth system models or similarly complex models in other areas of science; script and environment development for efficient use of large scientific model projects, preferably but not necessarily, involving earth system models; experience with optimizing and dealing with platform-specific issues in such applications.
• Strong computational and communication skills are required for the position.
• Ability to work independently.
• Excellent organizational skills are required
• Experience with standard software development tools such as version control, debugging, unix-based platform scripting, python scripting is required.
• To be successful in this role you will be a technically experienced and curious person who wants to support research in climate and earth-system science.
• Able to patiently and persistently meet technical challenges and be interested in working with a group of scientists across Canada who focus on earth-system modelling and climate change science.
• Able to support a user group that ranges from new graduate students to experienced research scientists and faculty.
• Able to regularly communicate to the CP4C community through email and interactive channels such as Teams and Slack, and provide written reports of your work to the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of CP4C.
• Capable of editing and drafting technical, training, and policy documents related to the project, in the form of website updates, email communications, short white papers, and presentations.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Knowledge of specific compiled program languages such as fortran is preferred but not required.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Communicator
• Multi-tasker
• Organized
• Patient
• Problem solver
• Resourceful

Closing Date: 04/18/2025, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW
Appointment Type: Grant - Term
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:
USW Pay Band 16 -- $101,539. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $129,851. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol.
Job Category: Engineering / Technical
Recruiter: Ann Yang

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.