Job Description

Position Purpose
The Center for Open Neuroscience ([CON](https://centerforopenneuroscience.org)), part of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, is seeking a Neuroinformagician — an enthusiastic Research Software Engineer to help build the infrastructure that makes neuroscience FAIR, Open, and Reproducible at scale. You will work on and with flagship open-source projects — including DataLad, DANDI, EMBER, and OpenNeuro Archives, and others — that are used by thousands of researchers worldwide and are central to the NIH BRAIN Initiative’s ecosystem.
This is a high-impact role at the intersection of scientific computing, data engineering, and open-source community building. You will design and implement workflows for versioned data management and processing, apply them to real data wrangling tasks, contribute to national neuroimaging data archives, and help shape the standards that define how neuroscience data is organized and shared. Your work will directly accelerate brain research across hundreds of laboratories.
You will collaborate with a diverse network of developers, neuroscientists, and standards architects across institutions and countries. The role offers genuine opportunities for professional growth — whether that means deepening expertise in distributed systems, learning neuroscience domain knowledge, contributing to published research, or developing leadership within open-source communities. Opportunities to present work and engage with collaborators at scientific conferences and developer sprints are available for those who enjoy them and have content to deliver!
Description
Required Qualifications - Education and Yrs Exp Bachelors or equivalent combination of education and experience
Required Qualifications - Skills, Knowledge and Abilities
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, neuroscience, or related field, or ability to demonstrate equivalent proficiency through a public track record of software engineering contributions (e.g., GitHub/GitLab profile).
2 years of relevant software engineering and programming experience.
Deep understanding of git — comfortable with its internals and able to script around git plumbing, not just routine commit-and-push workflows.
Solid proficiency in Python and its ecosystem: pytest, CLI frameworks, packaging.
Experience with free and open source software development workflows: public code review, continuous integration, issue-driven development.
Familiarity with virtualization/containerization (Docker/Podman, Singularity/Apptainer) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or similar).
Ability to work independently, prioritize across multiple concurrent projects, and communicate effectively in a distributed team.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with git-annex or another data versioning system (DVC, LFS) for managing large files alongside code. Even better: demonstrated depth with git-annex, DataLad, or significant contributions to git’s ecosystem.
Hands-on experience with neuroscience data and standards: familiarity with the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) and/or Neurodata Without Borders (NWB), including practical work with neuroimaging data (fMRI, EEG, MEG) or neurophysiology recordings. Experience contributing to standards development is a strong plus.
Demonstrable public history of open-source development — we will review your public GitHub/GitLab profile, commit history, and community interactions as part of the evaluation.
Demonstrated efficiency with agentic AI systems for software development and beyond — e.g., using LLM-powered coding assistants, AI-driven code review, automated refactoring, or building AI-augmented workflows. We value candidates who thoughtfully integrate AI tools into their engineering practice to amplify productivity while maintaining code quality.
Working knowledge of additional languages and platforms relevant to our stack: Rust, Haskell, JavaScript/TypeScript, shell scripting.
Experience with high-performance computing environments and job schedulers: SLURM, HTCondor.
Department Contact for Recruitment Inquiries Angela Beaupre
Department Contact Phone Number 646-9074
Department Contact for Cover Letter and Title Yaroslav Halchenko, Research Professor
Department Contact's Phone Number 646-9074
Equal Opportunity Employer
Dartmouth College is an equal opportunity employer under federal law. We prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, veteran status, marital status, or any other legally protected status. Applications are welcome from all.
Background Check
Employment in this position is contingent upon consent to and successful completion of a pre-employment background check, which may include a criminal background check, reference checks, verification of work history, conduct review, and verification of any required academic credentials, licenses, and/or certifications, with results acceptable to Dartmouth College. A criminal conviction will not automatically disqualify an applicant from employment. Background check information will be used in a confidential, non-discriminatory manner consistent with state and federal law.