PREP0003947 Methodology Software Engineer

PREP Research Associate

Opportunity No.: PREP0003947

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, and thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.

APPLY ONLINE HERE

Methodology Software Engineer

Project Description:

The applicant who is selected for this position will be part of a team of engineers and researchers conducting research and development (R&D) activities focused on accelerating the development and deployment of real-world test methodology to evaluate communications protocols in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) for first responder solutions.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Conduct a literature review and document the criteria for drone communications simulator solutions and the datasets that are used to train and test them
• Prepare an industry landscape identifying long-range communications, mesh networking, and best practices on developing methodologies of communications technologies
• Develop a software program for a new drone communications simulator platform or to retrofit an existing platform, integrating radio hardware communications components
• Develop open-source code and processes
• Create and collect measurement data for the drone simulator
• Document the dataset curation process for public use and determine the target public safety datasets and dataset enhancement options
• Participate in public safety working groups and stakeholder testing to compare simulations with live UAS flights and curate shared information from collaborators
• Evaluate drone simulator use cases and what datasets could be used to train and test them, as well as identify technology challenges and gaps to address

Desired Qualifications: 

• U.S. Citizens Preferred
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field
• Knowledge of network communications, network routing, and radio signaling
• Knowledge of robotics, UAS, or autonomous software programming (PX4, ArduPilot, AirSim, MAVLink)
• Knowledge of software engineering for virtual simulation applications
• Experience with modern AI tools and applications (AWS, GCP, Azure, MLFlow, SQL, BigQuery, Snowflake)
• Experience with development and manipulation of software code, such as Python, C, C++, Qt, JavaScript
• Knowledge of data structures, formats, and software coding curation processes
• Experience with developing open-source code, identifying use cases, and evaluating dataset quality and representativeness
• Knowledge of mathematical probability and statistics, and optimization methods
• Knowledge of machine learning, including supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, and model evaluation
• Knowledge of dataset biases and labeling issues
• Knowledge of translating operational needs into solvable radio signals or networking problems

Other Details:

• Full-time: the participant is expected to work 40 hours a week
• Location: the participant will work at the NIST Boulder, CO Campus.
• Duration: this is expected to be a one-year position. Extensions are sometimes granted depending on the availability of funds.
• For questions related to the research project or the nature of the work in this position, please contact Dr. Terese Manley (terese.manley@nist.gov). For questions related to the online application or NIST PREP more generally, please contact msu-nistprep@morgan.edu.

Privacy Act Statement

Authority: 15 U.S.C. § 278g-1(e)(1) and (e)(3) and 15 U.S.C. § 272(b) and (c)

Purpose: The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) which is designed to provide valuable laboratory experience and financial assistance to undergraduates, post-bachelor’s degree holders, graduate students, master’s degree holders, postdocs, and faculty.

PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate the administrative functions of the PREP Program.

Routine Uses: NIST will use the information collected to perform the requisite reviews of the applications to determine eligibility, and to meet programmatic requirements. Disclosure of this information is also subject to all the published routine uses as identified in the Privacy Act System of Records Notices: NIST-1: NIST Associates.

Disclosure: Furnishing this information is voluntary. When you submit the form, you are indicating your voluntary consent for NIST to use the information you submit for the purpose stated.