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Ask Slashdot: Scientific Research Positions For Programmers?
An anonymous reader writes "I recently (within the past couple years) graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and currently work as a programmer for a large software consulting firm. However, I've become gradually disillusioned with the financial-obsession of the business world and would like to work for the overall betterment of humanity instead. With that in mind, I'm looking to shift my career more toward the scientific research side of things. My interest in computer science always stemmed more from a desire to use it toward a fascinating end — such as modeling or analyzing scientific data — than from a love of business or programming itself. My background is mostly Java, with some experience in C++ and a little C. I have worked extensively with software analyzing big data for clients. My sole research experience comes from developing data analysis software for a geologic research project for a group of grad students; I was a volunteer but have co-authorship on their paper, which is pending publication. Is it realistic to be looking for a position as a programmer at a research institution with my current skills and experiences? Do such jobs even exist for non-graduate students? I'm willing to go to grad school (probably for geology) if necessary. Grad school aside, what specific technologies should I learn in order to gain an edge? Although if I went back to school I'd focus on geology, I'm otherwise open to working as a programmer for any researchers in the natural sciences who will take me."
The term is usually "research programmer" or something similar. However they're often time-limited positions rather than indefinite. A common arrangement is that a university gets a big grant, and needs to bring in some extra programmers to help out on the project for the ~3 years of a typical grant. The best-funded labs do keep some programming staff on semi-permanent payroll, though, because they always get a new round of grants before the previous ones run out.
I'd just start looking at job listings in the area you care about and see what skills or experience they ask for. Familiarity with data-analysis tools is often a plus, e.g. be conversant in R, be able to make some nice visualizations of data, etc. But that's only one area; there are plenty of others.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I reckon academia is heading towards hiring more programmers. We often have research grants where one of the employed researchers could be a statsy person with publications in the learned journals, or a computery person with lots of stuff shared in github and contributions to open-source projects and so on. The prof as PI on the grant is impressed by the former, I'm (as CI) impressed by the latter. Currently we tend to favour the statsy people, and they are often very poor programmers with little knowledge of version control, testing, Makefiles, awk, all that nerdy stuff that could make their life simpler. So I teach them...
I can only really talk confidently about statistics here (sample size = 1) but I know a bit about other places. University College London has a Research Software Development Team, for example: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/research-software-development/ and the whole development of programming skills for researchers is being pushed by the SSI (software.ac.uk) of which I am a fellow.
You might also want to look at Software Carpentry, a programme for training researchers in programming skills - there may be opportunities there.
So currently there's a few opportunities, but its getting better. A final thought though - you want to leave "the financial-obsession of the business world and would like to work for the overall betterment of humanity instead". Hahahaahha rofl. Academia is just as financially-obsessed as any trading house. I'm spending today doing paperwork for expenses claims, travel, grant proposals... Its all about the money... Oh do I sound disillusioned? Okay, I have probably stopped some people catching malaria, but not today...