Company: The University of Arizona
Job Location: Tucson, Arizona
Category: Software Engineer/Programmer
Type: Full-Time
Posting Number: req26695
Department: Pharmacy Practice and Science
Location: Tucson Campus
Address: Tucson, AZ USA
Position Highlights
The Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science trains pharmacist and scientist leaders in patient-centered care, interprofessional practice, and patient and population-oriented research. We are seeking an experienced and high-performing software developer with expertise in software engineering and agentic AI infrastructure, along with enthusiasm for working with a mid-sized academic team to develop optimized software and workflows for genomic and proteomic data analysis. The selected candidate…
will lead development efforts for both high-performance command-line analysis software and cloud-based web services.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
Outstanding U of A benefits include health, dental, and vision insurance plans; life insurance and disability programs; paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; U of A/ASU/NAU tuition reduction for the employee and qualified family members; retirement plans; access to U of A recreation and cultural activities; and more!
The University of Arizona has been recognized for our innovative work-life programs. For more information about working at the University of Arizona and relocations services, please click here.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Architect and lead development of agentic AI systems for scientific research, including multi-agent orchestration, tool-use and retrieval infrastructure, model serving and evaluation pipelines, and the abstractions that let LLM-driven agents reliably perform data wrangling, visualization, and analysis.
- Responsible for translating open-ended research problems into production-quality system designs, selecting and integrating model and framework technologies, and establishing engineering standards that keep these systems robust, observable, reproducible, and maintainable at scale.
- Design, write, and evaluate algorithms, software, workflows, and data management architectures supporting large-scale genomics and molecular dynamics data. Programming languages will include Python for agentic infrastructure, data management, and analysis, and Rust for speed-optimized algorithm implementations.
- Projects will entail development of command line tools, APIs, and cloud-based web services (both public and private cloud).
- Establish and maintain industry-grade software engineering practice across the research group, including testing, continuous integration and deployment, documentation, release management, security and credential handling, and cost and resource monitoring.
- Provide implementation and administration of workflow systems, containerization frameworks, and deployment onto national computational infrastructure such as DOE and NSF-supported HPC and cloud resources.
- Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and training for software engineers, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers, including code review, architectural guidance, and establishing shared engineering conventions.
- Contribute to grant development, strategic planning of the group's technical direction, and representation of the group's software and AI infrastructure work to collaborators, funding agencies, and the broader scientific community.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Ability to turn open-ended problems into concrete system architectures.
- Ability to communicate effectively in both technical and non-technical contexts.
- Ability to mentor and technically lead junior software engineers.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent advanced learning attained through professional level experience required.
- Minimum of 8 years of relevant work experience is required.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience setting software engineering standards across a team.
- Experience designing and operating production-grade cloud services.
- Mastery architecting LLM-based agentic systems, including orchestration, tool use, and evaluation.
- Mastery with Linux, HPC, and cloud environments.
FLSA: Exempt
Full Time/Part Time: Full Time
Number of Hours Worked per Week: 40
Job FTE: 1.0
Work Calendar: Fiscal
Job Category: Research
Benefits Eligible: Yes - Full Benefits
Rate of Pay: $117,883 - $153,248
Compensation Type: salary at 1.0 full-time equivalency (FTE)
Grade: 13
Compensation Guidance: The Rate of Pay Field represents the University of Arizona's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting. The University considers several factors when extending an offer, including but not limited to, the role and associated responsibilities, a candidate's work experience, education/training, key skills, and internal equity. The Grade Range represent a full range of career compensation growth over time. The university offers compensation growth opportunities within its career architecture. To learn more about compensation, please review our Applicant Compensation Guide and our Total Rewards Calculator.
Career Stream and Level: PC4
Job Family: Research Engineering
Job Function: Research
Type of criminal background check required: Name-based criminal background check (non-security sensitive)
Number of Vacancies: 1
Contact Information for Candidates: Travis Wheeler | twheeler@arizona.edu
Open Until Filled: Yes
Documents Needed to Apply: Resume, Cover Letter, and One Additional Document
Special Instructions to Applicant: Additional Document Request: Please provide the contact information for three professional references who have direct knowledge of your work experience and performance. References may include current or former supervisors, managers, or professional colleagues. Family members and personal friends should not be listed unless specifically requested.