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Research Software Developer

Details


1110756


UCL


01/05/2026


Other - See Job


Part-time; 18.5 hours per week


Not Applicable

Pay


£20.57


£3.85

Description

Role

Unitemps are recruiting for a Research Software Developer. This role is for a May 1st start date and has a projected end date of October 31st 2026. This is a full-time role at 35 hours per week. Payment is set at £20.57 per hour + £3.85 holiday pay. This role will be UCL hybrid working; part from campus and part from home.
 
The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction is one of the world’s leading academic centres of excellence in the management of projects, infrastructure delivery, construction and infrastructure economics and finance, real estate and urban economics, digital transformations in facilities and built asset management, and sustainable and data-driven change in the construction industry and its supply chains. Its mission is to have successful students, outstanding outputs and sustainable transformation, by:
  • delivering research-informed teaching on leading theories and practice
  • performing research which is useful to practitioners and is valued by scholars
  • advising on issues and delivering solutions to government and industry which improve performance

The School has around 700 students and over 100 staff members. Staff have strong international links with other leading global universities, and strategic relationships with relevant parts of government, key organisations in specific fields and major companies, in and beyond construction and infrastructure.

More information about the School can be found here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/construction/

Duties and responsibilities

This Research Software Developer post is required to build the computational infrastructure underpinning Themes 2 and 3 of From Hybrid Work to Hybrid Workforces, funded by the UCL Data Empowered Society Grand Challenge. The project’s simulation strand involves developing organisational digital twins — computational models that capture both formal organisational structures and informal collaboration networks — and creating AI-only simulated team sandboxes that allow researchers to test hypothetical scenarios, such as the effects of automation on innovation or changes to mentoring under different team configurations.
 
This technical work requires dedicated programming and modelling expertise that is not available within the existing research team. The PI and co-investigators have the domain knowledge to specify research questions but do not have capacity or the specialist technical skills to implement the simulation codebase. Without this post, Themes 2 and 3 cannot be delivered. 
 
The outputs — working digital twin simulations and AI agent sandboxes — are among the project’s most novel and strategically significant contributions, and their non-delivery would represent a major failure against funder expectations.
 
Duties and responsibilities
  • Develop and implement code for organisational digital twin simulations
  • Build and test AI agent-based simulations of team collaboration and organisational processes
  • Create software tools for running “what if” scenarios (e.g., effects of automation on innovation, reorganisation effects on mentoring)
  • Develop sandboxes for AI-only simulated teams to test boundaries of automation
  • Process and analyse data from simulation outputs
  • Document code, methodologies, and technical specifications
  • Collaborate with the research team to translate research questions into computational models
  • Test and debug simulation software
  • Contribute to the preparation of technical documentation and research outputs
  • Continually update knowledge of relevant programming languages, simulation frameworks, and AI/LLM developments

Skills and experience

Essential

  • A first degree in a relevant discipline (e.g., computer science, data science, computational social science, physics, mathematics, or related field)
  • Proficiency in Python or another relevant programming language
  • Experience with or strong interest in simulation or computational modelling
  • Ability to write clean, documented, and maintainable code
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Ability to work independently and manage tasks to deadlines
  • Good communication skills and ability to collaborate with non-technical team members

Desirable

  • Postgraduate qualification in a relevant discipline
  • Experience with agent-based modelling or multi-agent simulations
  • Familiarity with AI/LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source models)
  • Experience with social network analysis or network simulation
  • Knowledge of organisational theory or social science research methods
  • Experience with version control (e.g., Git)
  • Familiarity with data visualisation tools or libraries

Location
UCL; Hybrid working, part from the office and part from home

Additional information

This job will close for applications at 11.59pm on Wednesday April 15th. Interviews will be held shortly after.

*Please note to be eligible to work within this role, you must have the right to work in the UK, be physically based in the UK and be able to travel to our London based office for a RTW check (if required).

*If you have a full-time contract of employment with UCL, you are not able to work through UCL Unitemps at the same time.

Unitemps reserves the right to close this advert for applications prior to the date specified above, if a high volume of suitable applications are received so pleased don't delay applying.

Unitemps payroll is monthly, one month in arrears, please see the payroll dates here.

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