Senior Back-end Developer

imec EDiT

As a high-tech research centre that is partially publicly funded, imec carries a responsibility to ensure global as well as local impact. imec’s EDiT (“Enabling Digital Transformations”) department plays a leading role in realizing local impact of digital technology by conducting demand-driven R&D, in collaboration with authorities, other imec divisions, (academic) research institutes, companies, and citizens’ organisations. Our mission is to tackle so-called “wicked problems” in 3 main domains, or “clusters”: smart cities, mobility & logistics, and public health. Our activities are guided by an “Open for Impact” vision, which puts an emphasis on open knowledge, open source, and open data. Examples of our research programmes include City of Things, Mobilidata, Internet of Water, and Nervocity. EDiT is primarily based in Ghent and Antwerp, but also maintains a presence at imec’s main campus in Leuven.

What you will do

As a senior member of EDiT’s Mobility & Logistics cluster you will play a leading role in the development of demonstrators, as well as deployed systems, that will shape the transition from today’s traffic and goods flows into connected, “smart” mobility (C-ITS, CCAM, MaaS, ...) & logistics (Transport, Intermodality/Synchromodality, Physical Internet, …) solutions. You will strengthen the team on the engineering front and help them to apply cutting-edge technologies and best practices in software development, testing and deployment.

As an Application Engineer you will also join EDiT’s DEV competence centre, where we will provide coaching, arrange training, evaluate, and fine-tune your role and responsibilities, and plan your path within EDiT/imec together. Additionally, through our EDiT Communities of Practice initiative you will regularly interact with other developers, architects, designers, and user researchers across EDiT.

Who you are

We are looking for an experienced (i.e. “senior”) developer specialising in building efficient, scalable and reliable back-ends to drive a variety of Web, mobile and IoT applications, as well as (big) data analytics, modelling, and decision support services. Experience with various server-side and cloud-oriented technologies for event-handling, stream processing, testing, deployment, and scaling is highly valued. Prior exposure to the mobility & logistics domain is a bonus.

“Must-haves” (essential skills):

• Minimum of 5 years of professional experience in software engineering;
• Able to efficiently, and iteratively translate requirements to software architecture & implementation choices;
• Javascript, as your language of choice;
• Node.js, for implementation of back-ends & APIs …;
• … deployed as micro-services using Docker/Kubernetes;
• Relational & document-based databases (PostgreSQL, Mongo, etc.);
• Git (duh!);
• Able to quickly learn new programming languages, paradigms, patterns, frameworks, libraries, …;
• Team player, accustomed to Scrum or similar Agile process;
• Willing to get familiar with the mobility & logistics domain;
• An interest in research & innovation with societal relevance;
• Willing & able to coach junior team members;
• English (professional proficiency).

“Should-haves” (a great candidate is familiar with most of these):

• TypeScript, as a dialect you like or can live with;
• Python as your second or third language, e.g. applied for (agent-based) modelling, AI/ML, or data science use cases;
• Big data technologies such as Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, …;
• Having contributed, from a technical point of view, in scoping & functional requirements analysis;
• Geo-spatial technologies: e.g. PostGIS, Mapbox, Leaflet, CesiumJS, ArcGIS, QGIS, etc.;
• Design of micro-service/back-end architectures;
• Client-server interaction beyond REST: GraphQL, Web Sockets, Protocol Buffers, …;
• Event-driven systems, stream processing, caching, queuing & brokering technologies such as Apache Kafka, Redis, …;
• (notions of) HTML/CSS.

“Could-haves” (it is nice to tick a few of these boxes):

• Knowledge of traffic modelling or other mobility-related topics;
• Knowledge of logistics planning/modelling or other logistics-related topics;
• MS Azure cloud ecosystem (or equivalent, e.g. AWS, Google Cloud);
• CI/CD & DevOps technologies (e.g. Azure DevOps/Pipelines, Helm, Terraform, etc.);
• Experience with (Web) front-end framework(s) such as React, Vue.js, …;
• Mobile app development experience (Android, iOS or cross-platform);
• Testing methodologies (TDD, Consumer-driven Contract Testing) & frameworks (e.g. Jest, Mocha, Chai, PACT, etc.);
• Having made contributions to open-source projects (please mention in your application!);
• Dutch (notions or intention to learn).

For this position we will give preference to hiring a payroll employee, as opposed to contracting a freelancer or consultant.

What we do for you

In exchange for your talent, passion, and expertise, imec offers you a challenging high-tech environment and a stimulating diverse culture. Employees enjoy market-competitive compensation and benefits packages, engaging career opportunities, and state of the art facilities. EDiT’s main offices are centrally located in Ghent & Antwerp, but we are also present at imec’s HQ campus in Leuven. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home is currently the default across imec. Once governmental and imec-specific restrictions allow, you will be able to choose freely at which of our sites you spend most of your time. We have always been, and will remain, quite flexible with regards to working hours and remote working, as most team communications take place online.

Our open-minded and informal working culture offers you a range of possibilities to take initiative and show responsibility. Through our imec Academy, and other training initiatives, we actively invest in the development of all our employees to assure personal as well as collective growth. Joining imec is your opportunity to contribute to the technology that will determine tomorrow’s society. Your valuable contribution and that of your colleagues make imec a top player in its field.