Principal Research Engineer

Core responsibilities:

• Work with clients (both internal and external) to define software project requirements, timelines, and delivery plans
• Manage a growing team of software engineers and research software engineers across project delivery, HR, and budget/finance matters
• Serve as Principal Investigator on research grants and contracts (e.g., from UK government funding agencies)
• Directly contribute to engineering work as necessary and attend to culture of care, community, and purpose within team and across Topos

This role helps advance mathematical research software engineering projects, particularly CatColab, a platform for formal, interoperable, conceptual modelling, enabling society to better cooperate on critical issues like the climate crisis, pandemic responses, and global access to education through interconnected systems that consider holistic impacts.

Required skills and experience:

• PhD and strong track record of publications in category theory, type theory, and/or related research topics
• 3+ years industry software engineering experience and track record of managing teams to deliver production-grade software projects
• Experience working with clients to identify and update client requirements, and to manage client relationships
• Experience preparing budget forecasts and reviewing reports of expenses against budgets
• Strong programming skills, preferably including experience with Rust, TypeScript, and/or Julia
• Proficiency with industry standards for version control (Git, GitHub) and experience with cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS)

Benefits include private health and dental insurance, 30 days paid holiday (plus public holidays), and a variable pension plan. Salary range is £72,000–84,000 annually.

Topos Institute is a non-profit research institute dedicated to realising a world where the systems that surround us benefit us all, so that society can better cooperate on critical issues through interconnected systems that consider holistic impacts. They develop new tools for collective inquiry and modelling, enabled by a combination of novel foundational mathematics, open-source software engineering, and meaningful collaboration with domain specialists.