DIRECTOR, Software & Application Innovation Lab, Hariri Institute

DIRECTOR, Software & Application Innovation Lab, Hariri Institute

The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering (Hariri Institute) is a university-wide research center reporting to the VP for Research. The Institute serves as the university's premiere interdisciplinary hub for education, research, scholarship, innovation, and technology development associated with computing, AI, and data science research. Located in the University's Duan Center for Computing and Data Sciences, the Hariri Institute community consists of over 400 faculty affiliates, 50+ administrative and research staff, 200 graduate students, and over $25 million in annual research expenditure.

It is home to 10 initiative areas, including the university's largest industry partnership, the Red Hat Collaboratory, the signature Software and Application Innovation Lab (SAIL), the venerable Center for Information and Systems Engineering, and the Boston Womens Workforce Council, a public/private partnership between Boston University and the City of Bostons Mayors Office for Womens Advancement.

The Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL) is a collaborative partner for Boston University faculty and researchers within the Hariri Institute that engages in a variety of activities to encourage, enable, support, and execute research efforts involving technical, data-driven, computational, and software engineering aspects or components.

The Director oversees the overall operations of SAIL, provides code review and project management services to major SAIL projects, and works closely with the Institute's Director to integrate SAIL capacity appropriately throughout the spectrum of research projects and programs at the Institute with a software engineering component. The Director will shape and implement long-term plans for SAIL with regard to prioritizing existing opportunities, managing growth, and developing new opportunities for collaboration and partnership. Ultimately responsible for the success of SAIL, the individual in this role will serve as a key bridge between SAIL and Institute leadership and researchers and larger computing efforts throughout the University.

The SAIL Director will coordinate the work with project sponsors, create and maintain interlocking schedules for the SAIL projects, track project interdependencies, maintain and present project status, as well as track, manage, address, and report risks/issues. The SAIL Director will need to have proven experience leveraging the Agile/Scrum methodology to ensure the project delivery, consistent with overall priorities, agreed upon scope, timeframe, and budget.

The Director has direct supervision responsibility of the SAIL team including hiring, managing, and developing the employees who are integral to the delivery of projects.

Essential Functions:

(35%):

• Contributing to software architecture ideation and design for SAIL projects, performing code review, and acting as technical project manager particularly for complex multi-person and (often multi-team) projects that require coordination among multiple software developers. In this capacity the SAIL Director seeks to shield project PIs from technical details and ensures PI satisfaction with ongoing projects.
• Manage program portfolios with clients, planning and prioritizing projects, maintaining a program roadmap, and preparing annual planning and budgeting project proposals.
• Manage multiple projects within SAIL among different project teams, overseeing requirements gathering, project planning, resourcing, execution, change control, issue/risk management, and regular status communication to relevant stakeholders.

This position will be responsible for executing all projects using structure approaches like Agile/Scrum and is accountable for ensuring the project activities are productive, positive, and kept within the agreed upon time-box.

30%:

• Collaborating with faculty affiliates in social, physical, natural, and medical science disciplines with the conception and pursuit of software engineering components of research projects for proposals to extramural funding agencies.
• Serving as co-investigator or senior personnel on research projects; identifying funding opportunities and projects and managing growth. Meeting with potential collaborators to assess goals and understand where SAIL can best add value.
• Staff Supervision (Assoc. Director, Engineering and associated Software Engineering team).
• Strategic planning and collaboration within the larger BU research computing ecosystem, especially related to the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, New England Research Cloud, and/or related regional, or national research computing infrastructure.
• Administration: Working with Institute leadership on annual reporting, budget exercises and financial models, and other ad-hoc projects.

Required Skills

Doctoral degree and 5-8 years of experience required. Successful candidates would have:

• A deep knowledge of technical architectures and application development tools.
• A proven track record in delivering applications and prioritizing work via different project/portfolio approaches.
• Consultative approach to building relationships within an internal community.