Calls
This call invites members of the University of Oxford to apply for up to 3 months of professional Research Software Engineering (RSE) support at 0.5 FTE. The purpose of the support is to help researchers prepare, adapt, or optimise research software for effective use of ARC and BMRC high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
In this context, we consider research software to be either a single software tool or a pipeline that may include others’ software.
The scheme is intended to support computationally intensive research where targeted engineering input would significantly improve performance, scalability, sustainability, or readiness for HPC environments.
Proposed work is expected to lead to more effective, efficient, or appropriate use of ARC and/or BMRC compute resources.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be members of the University of Oxford (academic staff, postdoctoral researchers, or postgraduate researchers with supervisor approval).
- Projects must have a clear plan to use ARC and/or BMRC compute resources.
- Software may be at any stage of maturity, from early prototype to established codebase.
What Support Covers (In Scope)
Successful applications are likely to fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Performance optimisation, e.g.
- Profiling and optimising existing code to reduce runtime or memory usage on HPC systems
- Improving I/O efficiency for large-scale data processing
- Parallelisation, e.g.
- Introducing or improving shared-memory (e.g. OpenMP) or distributed-memory (e.g. MPI) parallelism
- Improving scalability across nodes and cores
- Accelerator and architecture-aware development, e.g.
- Porting code to GPUs (e.g. CUDA, ROCm, HIP, SYCL)
- Adapting code to better exploit vectorisation or modern CPU architectures
- Refactoring code into more performant languages or frameworks
- HPC readiness for new projects, e.g.
- Designing software architecture and workflows that will scale on HPC when the project matures
- Selecting appropriate languages, libraries, and data formats for HPC use
- Establishing reproducible build and run environments
- Software sustainability and maintainability, e.g.
- Improving code structure, testing, documentation, and reproducibility where these directly support HPC use
- Refactoring legacy research code to make it usable and performant on ARC/BMRC
What Support Does Not Cover
The following is a non-exhaustive list of things generally not in scope for this call:
- Purely methodological or theoretical research without a software engineering component
- Routine user support or training in how to log into or submit jobs to ARC/BMRC
- Long-term maintenance or feature development unrelated to HPC performance or scalability
- Software development that does not target ARC or BMRC usage
- Data analysis tasks that do not require HPC-scale computation
How to Apply
Fill out the form linked below. You will be asked for the following long-form information, which you may wish to pre-prepare:
- Brief project summary (1000 characters)
Describe the research aims and why computation is required. If this is part of a larger funded project, please give details as well as funder details and grant numbers. - Brief description of the existing software or planned technical approach (1500 characters)
Include current limitations, scale, and dependencies where relevant. - Description of the requested RSE work (2000 characters)
Describe what you want the RSE to work on, what success would look like, and any key technical risks or uncertainties. - Why is professional software engineering support required? (1000 characters)
Explain why this work requires specialist expertise or dedicated engineering time. - What will be possible after this support that is not possible now? (1000 characters)
Focus on scientific, technical, or scale-related impact. - How will the software be maintained or supported after the completion of the RSE support?
Describe who will maintain the software, for how long, and how the RSE work will be sustained.
Assessment Criteria
Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis by members of the Oxford RSE team, and will be judged against the following criteria:
- Benefit to ARC/BMRC
The proposed work will lead to more effective, efficient, or appropriate use of ARC and/or BMRC compute resources. - Technical Feasibility
The scope of work is clearly defined and realistically achievable within (at most) 3 months at 0.5 FTE. - Research Impact
The work is expected to enable significant new scientific capability, scale, or performance. - Value of RSE Support
The requested outcomes require professional software engineering expertise and would not reasonably be achieved without dedicated RSE input. - Post-Project Sustainability
There is a credible plan for maintaining, supporting, or appropriately retiring the software after the RSE engagement ends.
This call invites members of the University of Oxford to apply for up to 3 months of professional Research Software Engineering (RSE) support from the Oxford Research Software Engineering group (OxRSE) at 0.5 FTE. The purpose of the support is to help researchers prepare, adapt, or optimise research software for effective use in cloud computing environments.
The scheme is intended to support research projects where targeted research software engineering input can enable more effective, sustainable, or scalable use of cloud computing environments.
This support provides focused, time-limited engineering work and does not include ongoing maintenance or long-term feature development.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be members of the University of Oxford (academic staff, postdoctoral researchers, or postgraduate researchers with supervisor approval).
- Projects must have a clear plan for how cloud computing will be used (this does not need to be highly technical).
- Software may be at any stage of maturity, from early prototype to established codebase.
What Support Covers (In Scope)
Successful applications are likely to fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Designing software architecture and workflows that scale in cloud computing environments
- Selecting appropriate languages, libraries, and data formats for use in cloud computing environments
- Designing efficient data storage, access, and processing strategies for large-scale datasets
- Establishing reproducible build and deployment environments
- Automating pipelines for reproducible and reliable cloud deployment and execution, including CI/CD practices
- Using infrastructure-as-code to define and reproduce cloud environments
- Addressing security and access considerations for cloud-based workflows
- Improving software sustainability and maintainability (e.g. code structure, testing, documentation), and supporting knowledge transfer to research teams
Important: This support covers staff (RSE) time only and does not include cloud compute costs. Applicants must cover any cloud compute costs associated with their project.
What Support Does Not Cover
The following is a non-exhaustive list of things generally not in scope for this call:
- Purely methodological or theoretical research without a software engineering component
- Routine user support (e.g. software installation or basic use of cloud computing platforms and resources)
- Ongoing maintenance, support, or feature development beyond the scope of the 3-month engagement
- Software development that does not target cloud computing usage
How to Apply
Fill out the form linked below. You will be asked for the following long-form information, which you may wish to pre-prepare:
- Project title (100 characters)
- Brief project summary (1000 characters)
Describe the research aims and the software that this work will support. If this is part of a larger funded project, please include details of the funder and grant number(s). - Description of the requested RSE work (1000 characters)
Describe what you want the RSE to work on, what success would look like, and any key technical risks or uncertainties. - Data protection and retention (1000 characters)
Describe the type of data your project will use, including any sensitive or personal data. Outline how the data will be stored, protected, and managed over time, including any retention or deletion requirements. - Optional: Cloud services or tools (500 characters)
If known, please list any specific cloud services or tools you expect to use (e.g. storage, compute, databases, or workflow tools on platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud). If you are unsure, you can leave this blank. - How will the software be maintained or supported after the completion of the RSE support?
Describe who will maintain the software, for how long, and how the RSE work will be sustained. This is particularly important to ensure that any deployed services remain secure and that data continues to be handled appropriately over time. - Length of support required
Support is offered for the duration of the project (up to 3 months). - Budget allocation for cloud costs, if applicable
This helps us plan which services would be cost-effective within budget constraints
This call invites members of the University of Oxford to apply for up to 3 months of professional Research Software Engineering (RSE) support from the Oxford Research Software Engineering group (OxRSE) at 0.2 FTE. The purpose of the support is to help researchers prepare, adapt, or optimise research software related to projects in AI Security as part of the Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR) project.
In this context, we consider research software to be either a single software tool or a pipeline that may include others’ software.
The scheme is intended to support development of sustainable software and improve performance in projects related to AI security. This could include code optimisation, refactoring and increasing robustness, adding tests (CI/CD) and documentation, and publishing packages to package registries, as well as exploratory proof-of-concept work.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be members of the University of Oxford (academic staff, postdoctoral researchers, or postgraduate researchers with supervisor approval). Priority will be given to applicants from Departments participating in the LASR programme: Computer Science, Engineering Science, Mathematical Institute, Physics, and Statistics.
- Projects must have a clear plan to utilise OxRSE for infrastructure support, software development support or support in delivering training courses.
- Software may be at any stage of maturity, from early prototype to established codebase.
What Support Covers (In Scope)
Successful applications are likely to fall into one or more of the following categories:
- General AI software support
- Delivering or supporting delivery of AI and software engineering courses
- Performance optimisation, e.g. profiling and optimising existing code to reduce runtime or memory usage
- Software architecture design for improving scalability
- Software design and implementation to enable running on ARC/BMRC clusters
- Establishing reproducible build and run environments
- Software sustainability and maintainability, e.g. improving code structure, testing, documentation, and reproducibility
What Support Does Not Cover
The following is a non-exhaustive list of things generally not in scope for this call:
- Purely methodological or theoretical research without a software engineering component
- Routine user support with software installation on clusters
- Long-term maintenance or feature development (> 3 months). For longer projects, please use our general enquiry form
How to Apply
Fill out the form linked below. You will be asked for the following long-form information, which you may wish to pre-prepare:
- Project title (100 characters)
- Brief project summary (1000 characters)
Describe the research aims and the software that this work will support. If this is part of a larger funded project outside LASR, please give details as well as funder details and grant numbers. - Type of support required
- One-off, quick help with a software question
- Regular meetings for software guidance/support
- Direct development work
- _________ (other)
- Description of the requested RSE work (1000 characters)
Including success criteria and key technical risks or uncertainties. - Length of support required (if applicable)
