Overview As Director/Senior Director of Research Software Engineering, you lead the engineering of researcher-facing software that unlocks autism and neuroscience datasets for the scientific community. You shape long-term software strategy, oversee SFARI Base and related systems, and partner with Informatics and program teams to meet researcher needs. You drive engineering excellence, guide open science and FAIR data practices, and help integrate AI into research tools. You will lead a cross-functional team to deliver impactful, scalable software for data-driven discovery.
Responsibilities- Define and execute the long-term vision for researcher-facing software and data infrastructure
- Oversee full-stack development of SFARI Base and build new systems for data exploration
- Set engineering standards (testing, docs, code review, security) and ensure reliability and scalability
- Manage and grow a software engineering team, promote modern practices and collaboration
- Collaborate with Bioinformatics, Study Systems Engineering, and Product Analytics teams to translate researcher needs into software
- Ensure timely, high-quality project delivery with risk management and stakeholder communication
- Champion researcher experience, ensuring intuitive, well-documented tools
- Uphold Open Science and FAIR data principles in system design and data presentation
- Perform other duties as assigned
Key requirements- 12+ years of software engineering experience
- 7+ years in a leadership or management role
- Proven ability to set technical vision and deliver complex data-intensive projects
- Experience leading full-stack web development teams
- Experience building software for genomics or data-intensive life sciences research
- Strong leadership in building high-performing teams with focus on rigor and mentorship
- Proficiency in Python and Python-based web development (e.g., Django)
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Commitment to reproducibility, open science, and engineering excellence
- strong communication
- cross-functional collaboration
- curiosity about science
- Python
- Django
- full-stack web development
