Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron facility. It generates extremely intense sources of light ranging from the InfraRed to X-rays that are used to probe the structure and function of matter. Located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in South Oxfordshire, Diamond host’s facilities supporting cutting edge research in all fields of science.

Responsible for leading in the design, development and implementation of integrated beamline data acquisition software, in close coordination with beamline scientists, controls and data analysis groups. In addition to day-to-day management of the group, you will be responsible for developing, with the data analysis group leader, a medium term vision for beamline software that meets the needs of the Diamond user community. 

Duties

• Lead and manage the Diamond Data acquisition group in close collaboration with the relevant support groups in Diamond, in particular data analysis and controls.
• Collate, understand, and communicate the requirements for data acquisition software across Diamond, translating these into functional and technical specifications.
• Development, implementation and management of a medium term strategic software development plan for data acquisition in collaboration with beamline scientists and the relevant support groups, in particular controls and data analysis.
• Provide regular reports showing progress against outstanding milestones, status, resource requirements, issues and risks to the divisional Director and other internal and external stakeholder.
• Provide and manage where appropriate the delivery of technical and professional knowledge to identify opportunities for technical or process improvement within Diamond.
• Provide a technical advisory/support function within area of expertise to Diamond.
• Take full responsibility for the architecture, design, code, test, deployment, documentation and support of data acquisition applications at Diamond.
• Budget management.

• Ability and initiative to get to the heart of the problem and take it effectively through to completion;
• Strong leadership ability to ensure the above;
• Ability to effectively manage a team;
• Good interpersonal, communication and presentational skills;
• Ability to produce effective management project briefings to directors and senior colleagues;
• Establishing budgets and recruitment forecasts;
• Self-motivated, interested in keeping pace with software development best practice techniques;
• Ability to interact effectively with staff at all levels;
• Experience of modern software project management techniques and tools;
• Overall experience of common computing facilities and operating systems and what they can offer;
• Experience of gathering software requirements from diverse clients and interests and building coherent lists for their delivery;
• Managing the expectations of clients in the light of resource constraints;
• Experience of leading multi-disciplinary software teams;
• Background in using software engineering techniques for development and testing;
• Use of software development frameworks and applications such as Eclipse;
• Experience of modern programming languages such as Java, C, C++ and Python;
• Experience of interfacing software to hardware.

Available to travel occasionally in UK and overseas including overnight absences.