Lead Software Engineer / Postdoctoral Researcher (f/m/x) to Develop Federated Learning Solutions

We seek a proficient software engineer to lead our federated learning and medical data-sharing infrastructure.

We welcome applications from postdoctoral researchers with strong software engineering skills who are interested in pursuing their academic careers and skilled software engineers who are passionate about innovating new tools and platforms.

Your tasks will be:

As our new member, you will lead our distributed analytics team at the Institute of Biomedical Informatics (BI-K) in Cologne, contributing to federated learning projects such as PrivateAIM and BETTER. Our team has long experience in developing a federated and incremental learning solution named PADME. We implemented and applied these solutions in various clinical use cases. In our new projects, we will further develop solutions for the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) and Data Integration Centers (DIC) in hospitals. Your tasks will include:

• Leading the design, development, testing, and documentation of novel research data infrastructure projects that enable the secondary use of health data on national (German) scale
• Developing innovative technologies in collaboration with national (German) medical and research data infrastructures such as the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII), and the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)
• Engaging closely with top-tier institutions, and renowned German universities on the development of the new infrastructures
• Contributing to the development of a research and innovation agenda for the federated learning in health­care research and infrastructures
• Supporting data reusability, big data management for research, and multimodal data integration

• Sc. or PhD. in Computer Science/related fields or comparable experience
• Excellent track records in academic field or proven expertise to lead a software team.
• Good understanding and hands-on experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Helm charts, container registries like Harbor. Familiarity with Docker and K8s API.
• Proficiency in at least one of the following languages: Python, JavaScript/Node.js, TypeScript
• A working understanding of web technologies such as: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript
• Working knowledge of HTTP and RESTful interfaces
• Interest in working with the following technologies: HashiCorp Vault, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Apache Airflow, MinIO, other S3-compatible object-storage systems, Keycloak with OpenID Connect/OAuth 2.0, and potentially Vue.js, Angular, or React.js
• Familiarity with modern software development tools and data science practices, including continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) naming GitLab CI and GitHub Actions
• Strong willingness to learn new technologies
• Experience with or a willingness to learn healthcare-related standards (e.g., data exchange, HL7/FHIR, and terminologies)
• Be independent, self-motivated, reliable, and keen to learn and solve practical challenges
• Good communication skills and eager to work as part of a research team/ interdisciplinary research groups
• Innovative, committed, and collaborative
• Strong command of English; proficiency in German is desirable

• We support you in progressing in your academic career and/or support innovation activities such as start-ups
• We offer an excellent technical infrastructure (medical data integration center) and clinical collaborations to work with real-world healthcare data
• We guide you to acquire your own research projects and lead a team of junior developers and researchers
• We promote your professional career development with the opportunity to take part in projects in national as well as European-wide academic, research and industry consortia
• Our institute promotes diversity and offers a family-friendly and modern working environment
• Flexible working hours and home office are possible

Working at the University Hospital Cologne and the Medical Faculty means helping to shape the future - the future of medicine, of patients and, of course, your own future. You benefit from 60 clinics and institutes as well as numerous other departments and facilities and more than 12,000 jobs. The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Cologne and the University Hospital Cologne assume important social tasks in research, teaching and patient care. A close network with many university and non-university partners guarantees an internationally successful science and the excellent education of our students.

The Institute of Biomedical Informatics is a newly founded and dynamic Institute at the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne. Its mission is to support data-driven transformation in medicine and develop novel artificial intelligence technologies for personalized medicine.

You will be part of an agile, innovative and interdisciplinary team that brings together expertise from different disciplines to create synergies. You will have the opportunity to work with real-world data and collaborate with clinicians to solve problems that can have an impact on the lives of many people.

National and international information exchange and collaboration are supported – promoting both your own career and the success of your projects.