Assistant Research Engineer

Job Details

Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876, is America's first research university and home to nine world-class academic divisions working together as one university.

Salary: $70,000 - $80,000 per year

Johns Hopkins University: Whiting School of Engineering: Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics

Description

General summary/purpose:

The Assistant Research Engineer will oversee the organization, curation, and management of imaging and clinical data within a research lab specializing in endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This role supports data integrity, accessibility, and security across multiple research projects. The ideal candidate is highly organized, technically adept, and comfortable working in both Windows and Unix/Linux computing environments.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

Data Management

• Maintain and organize large, multi-modal imaging datasets (EUS, MRI, and associated clinical data).
• Ensure accurate data tracking, naming consistency, and version control across storage systems.
• Develop and maintain data management procedures, including standardized file organization and documentation.
• Perform data transfers, backups, and archival using secure and efficient tools.
• Work with research staff to track data acquisition, quality control, and processing workflows.
• Support data sharing among collaborators by being a resource on technical and workflow aspects, ensuring compliance with institutional and ethical data policies.
• Prepare summary reports, data inventories, and project metrics using Microsoft Excel and related tools.
• Develop and maintain automated scripts (e.g., Bash or PowerShell) to streamline file management and data workflows.
• Support activities to prepare AI-ready multimodal datasets.

AI Model Development

• Develop AI models for EUS segmentation
• Develop MRI segmentation model(s) using larger image datasets
• Collaborate with research team members for multimodal model integration
• Collaborate with research team members for federated platform development

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, biomedical engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, particularly Excel.
• Excellent organizational and documentation skills with strong attention to detail.
• Solid understanding of file systems and command-line operations on both Windows and Unix/Linux (e.g., mv, find, rsync, cp).
• Experience with file management tasks such as searching, renaming, and batch processing using scripts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master of Science degree in computer science, biomedical engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience with high-performance computing (HPC) environments and job scheduling systems (e.g., SLURM).
• Familiarity with Globus or similar large-scale data transfer tools.
• Familiarity with setting up and working with federated learning frameworks.
• Background knowledge in medical imaging or healthcare research environments.
• Comfort working with cross-disciplinary teams (clinical staff, engineers, and computational scientists).

Ideal Candidate

You are meticulous, proactive, and thrive on keeping complex datasets organized and traceable. You enjoy working across technical systems and are comfortable managing both detailed spreadsheets and large distributed file structures.