The Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs 6,000 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of 16,000 people, including over 10,000 students and 3,500 researchers from 120 different countries.
The EPFL Blue Brain Project (BBP), situated on the Campus Biotech in Geneva, Switzerland, applies advanced neuroinformatics, data analytics, high-performance computing and simulation-based approaches to the challenge of understanding the structure and function of the mammalian brain in health and disease. The BBP provides the community with regular releases of data, models and tools to accelerate neuroscience discovery and clinical translation through open science and global collaboration.
UX Designer / Developer W/M
Your mission :
The aim of the EPFL Blue Brain Project, a Swiss brain research initiative founded and directed by Professor Henry Markram, is to establish simulation neuroscience as a complementary approach alongside experimental, theoretical and clinical neuroscience to understanding the brain, by building the world’s first biologically detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mouse brain.
The brain is one of the biggest Big Data problems we have today. Therefore, the Neuroinformatics Software Engineering team recently open sourced the Blue Brain Nexus platform to organize, store and process exceptionally large volumes of data in a semantic way and support usage by a broad number of users.
Going beyond the specific use case of the BBP, Blue Brain Nexus is designed to be agnostic of the data domain it is applied to, making it suitable for semantic data management within the scientific community as well as in many other industries. Blue Brain Nexus is already being used by scientists and researchers all over the world.
You would be joining the Neuroinformatics Software Engineering team, which is in charge of designing and developing the future of our open-source ecosystem
Blue Brain Nexus, as a UX Developer / Frontend Developer.
You will be tasked with designing and creating rich web applications (Nexus Fusion, open source) to facilitate the work of scientists such as organizing scientific workflows, sharing and searching data, visualizations. You are a UX developer passionate about Javascript and the web. You are familiar with movements in design methods and tooling. You are a proactive team player who will not shy away from taking ownership over the ui/ux design, prototyping, and development workflow. You have a product-oriented approach to designing user-centric and delightful interfaces.
If you would like to read more about what we do, please take a look at the Blue Brain Nexus technology page, the announcement of its open-sourcing (read the EPFL press release) and an interview on the role of Neuroinformatics at BBP (read the Technology Networks’ interview). Main duties and responsibilities include :
Contribute in delivering react scientific web applications from the design stage to implementation and deployment in close collaboration with the Product Manager and other developers,
Enable the team to deliver empowering digital interfaces and delightful experiences for our users,
Design user interfaces and create clickable prototypes with adobe XD or Figma,
Drive prototypical design phases such as creating content maps, wireframes and mockups,
Participate in the collection of feedback from user testing,
Design and develop a web application to enable scientists in their collaborative data-driven activities.
This will include:
registration of scientific data,
search capabilities to enable scientist to find and reuse relevant data,
visualize scientific data through plugins,
Integrate user interface with mainstream Data Science tools (e.g. iPython Notebook or workflow engines) to facilitate the computation of scientific data,
ability to disseminate the outcome of scientific work as data portals.
Build tools, libraries and tutorials to facilitate the adoption of Blue Brain Nexus with other BBP teams and worldwide users,
Participate in presentations, training, and technical discussions inside BBP and at conferences and workshops,
All aspects of modern software development life-cycle: testing, continuous integration, DevOps, documentation and direct user support,
Participate in the definition of the Blue Brain Nexus ecosystem roadmap and software specification,
Participate in the recruitment of new talents and onboarding the new team members,
Implement best-practices for maintainable software development.
Your profile :
Experience and preferred skills
Familiar with UX design and prototyping tools such as Adobe XD or Figma,
Solid understanding of UX/UI design fundamentals,
Expertise in modern Javascript and preferably Typescript,
Experience with React and other Javascript frameworks,
Well-versed in the modern Javascript ecosystem,
Solid HTML and CSS knowledge,
Experience working with REST APIs,
Experience in working with modern version control systems such as git,
Agile software development, unit and integration testing.
Experience in any of the following areas would be a plus
Experience in developing data visualization applications (d3.js, three.js, WebGL...),
Experience in making compelling user experience and UI design,
DevOps technologies (Docker, OpenShift, Jenkins),
Semantic web technologies (RDF/OWL, SPARQL, RDF Triple Stores),
Knowledge of other programming languages, notably Python, Bash, and Scala.
Profile:
Master degree in computer science or equivalent professional experience,
At least 3 years experience of UI design and frontend software development,
Excellent command of the English language, both written and spoken. French would be a plus.
We offer :
Opportunity to work on open source software with a growing community of users,
An internationally visible and rising project in simulation-based research in neuroscience using supercomputers,
A dynamic, exceptionally inter-disciplinary, and international working environment,
A beautiful working environment, based at Campus Biotech near the lakeside in Geneva,
Opportunities for skill development through our sharing-oriented team, training and conferences.
Start date :
As soon as possible Term of employment :
Fixed-term (CDD)Duration :
1 year, renewable Remark :
Only candidates who applied through EPFL website or our partner Jobup’s website will be considered. Files sent by agencies without a mandate will not be taken into account.apply online
