Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron science facility. Located at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, Diamond enables world-leading research across a wide range of scientific disciplines and industrial applications.

Control systems for the three electron accelerators that make up Diamond are realised as a distributed, heterogeneous computing environment, using embedded systems for direct control of the technical subsystems and instrumentation, together with Linux workstations for the operator interfaces. Most of the embedded applications are coded in C or built using the EPICS control system toolkit, and the Linux applications use a combination of C, Java and scripting languages.

As a Graduate Software Systems Engineer working on the accelerator control systems your task will be to work closely with a team of scientists and engineers to develop software and control systems to deliver ultra stable x-ray beams from the Diamond storage ring. 

Duties and Responsibilities to include:

• Work with scientists and engineers on the overall design and specification for the control systems;
• Work as part of a small team to design, implement, test and document control software for the photon beamlines;
• Provide support for the commissioning of photon beamline control systems;
• Provide operational support and maintenance of software for existing systems, including attention and response to fault reports when appropriate;
• Personal training and development;

• Honours degree in physics, Elec. Eng., Comp. science or Equivalent other degree and relevant experience;
• Demonstrate ability to communicate effectively, both orally and written;
• Ability to solve technical problems, evaluating alternative courses of action and innovating where necessary;
• Demonstrate self-motivation and a willingness to take responsibility;
• Demonstrate ability to work as part of a team;
• Demonstrate ability to work effectively alone and without direct supervision;
• Understanding of software design and/or programming of industrial or scientific systems; 
• Knowledge and experience in programming in C or an Object Orientated language;
• Understanding of software in a real time distributed environment;
• Knowledge and experience of developing in a Unix environment;
• A requirement of the role is that additional overtime at unsociable hours may need to be worked;
• The role holder may need travel in the UK and abroad, including occasional periods away from home;
• Be prepared to undertake further training;

• Knowledge and experience of developing with a source code control and structured release environment;
• Knowledge and experience of embedded systems;
• Knowledge and experience of Linux on PC’s;
• Knowledge of networking protocols;

NB: Please note that this position is advertised at two levels (also Software Systems Engineer), with only one appointment to be made.

http://diamond.ac.uk/Careers/Vacancies/All/DIA0898B_NH.html