Senior “Full-stack” Developer

imec EDiT

As a high-tech research centre that is partially publicly funded, imec carries a responsibility to ensure local impact of the digital technologies it helps develop. The EDiT (“Enabling Digital Transformations”) department plays a leading role in realizing imec’s local impact by conducting demand-driven research & development, in collaboration with several authorities, imec departments, academic & other research institutes, companies, and citizen’s organizations. Our mission is to tackle so-called “wicked problems” in 3 main domains, or “clusters”: (smart) cities, mobility & logistics, and public health. The activities of EDiT are guided by our “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, Maak dat mee, Internet of Water, and a forthcoming public health initiative (tentative).

What you will do

As a senior member of EDiT’s Cities cluster you will be responsible for the development of innovative smart city solutions using cutting edge technologies and methodologies. Together with your teammates, you will be instrumental in the creation of an open source framework for building “Urban Digital Twins”, which ingest standardised IoT data, feed it to predictive models, visualize thousands of data points in 3D web clients, and work on new standards ensuring digital twin technology is interoperable. You will coach your colleagues in software development best practices, testing and DevOps.

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.

What we do for you

EDiT is based at the imec offices in the centers of Ghent and Antwerp. You can choose from which of these two cities you prefer to work, and we have always been open to homework, as most of the team communication takes place online.
In exchange for your talent, passion, and expertise, you will join a multicultural and high-tech company, with challenges there for the taking. Our flexible and informal working environment offers you a range of possibilities to take initiative and show responsibility. This is your opportunity to contribute to the technology that will determine the society of tomorrow. imec supports and guides you in this process, not only with words but with concrete actions. Through imec.academy, 'our corporate university', we are actively investing in the further development of all our employees to assure their technical and personal growth. Your valuable contribution and that of your colleagues make imec a top player in its field. Your energy and commitment are therefore appreciated by means of an attractive and competitive salary with many fringe benefits.

Who you are

We are looking for an experienced (i.e. “senior”) “full-stack” developer specializing in building cutting-edge (Web) applications and complex data processing architectures using Javascript/TypeScript as the main implementation language. The emphasis of the role will be on the back-end, so ideally this is where you excel. However, knowledge of front-end technologies is a bonus.

“Must-haves” (essential skills):

• Minimum of 6 years of professional experience in software engineering;
• Able to quickly learn new technologies (paradigms, languages, frameworks, libraries, patterns, …);
• Able to efficiently, and iteratively translate user/system requirements to software architecture & implementation choices;
• Javascript, as your language of choice;
• Node.js, for implementation of back-ends & APIs;
• Docker/Kubernetes micro-services;
• Relational & document-based databases (PostgreSQL, Mongo, etc.);
• Git (duh!);
• Experience with testing methodologies & frameworks (e.g. Jest, Mocha, Chai, etc.)
• Team player accustomed to Scrum or similar Agile process;
• 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;
• Design of micro-service/back-end architectures;
• HTML/CSS;
• React, or other modern (Web) front-end framework(s);
• MS Azure cloud ecosystem;
• Having made contributions to open source projects (please mention in your application!);
• Client-focused attitude.

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

• Python or Golang, as your second or third language;
• Stream processing, Event driven systems, Domain Driven Development;
• Consumer-driven Contract Testing (e.g. PACT);
• Web graphics & styling technologies: WebGL, DeckGL, D3, Emotion, etc.;
• Web geo-spatial technologies: Mapbox, Leaflet, CesiumJS, etc.;
• CI/CD technologies (Azure DevOps/Pipelines, Helm, Terraform, etc.);
• IoT technologies (IoTHub, NGSI, …);
• AI/ML, Big data, and/or Data science technologies;
• Digital Twin technologies (Azure Digital Twin, Bentley iModel, …);
• Mobile app development experience (Android or cross-platform);
• Dutch (notions or intention to learn).