Senior Research Engineer

Description:

The Human Data Interaction Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi is seeking to appoint a Senior Research Engineer to support and lead the design, development, evaluation, and dissemination of novel systems and tools for decision-making support. The position is intended for a highly experienced researcher and systems builder with strong technical independence, excellent software engineering practices, and a demonstrated ability to translate research ideas into robust, reproducible, and usable tools.

The successful candidate must be available to start immediately and should bring a minimum of six years of relevant research experience, together with at least a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Data Systems, or a closely related field.

HuDa Lab examines data and decision-making from a tooling and systems-building perspective. The lab designs and builds systems that support decision-making across a variety of domains, including disinformation mitigation, collaborative decision-making, interactive data exploration, and optimization problems in uncertain environments such as stock portfolio optimization. The lab does not specialize in applied data science projects or computational social science research. Candidates whose primary interest is applied data science rather than building tools, systems, and research prototypes for data-driven decision-making are encouraged to consider opportunities in other labs.

The Senior Research Engineer will be expected to contribute intellectually and technically to ongoing and new research projects. This includes designing and implementing research-grade systems, developing algorithms and interfaces, conducting simulations and comparative performance evaluations, designing and running user studies, maintaining high-quality code and data artifacts, and preparing research outputs for publication and presentation. The candidate should be comfortable working independently, mentoring junior researchers or research assistants, and collaborating closely with faculty, students, and external partners.

Key Responsibilities Include
 

• Designing, building, and maintaining novel systems and tools for decision-making support.
• Developing research prototypes, interactive interfaces, data-processing pipelines, and experimental platforms.
• Evaluating systems through rigorous experiments, simulations, benchmarks, and user studies.
• Maintaining reproducible code, documentation, datasets, and research artifacts through GitHub and other shared repositories.
• Preparing technical reports, presentations, research manuscripts, and LaTeX documents.
• Contributing to grant-funded research outputs, conference submissions, and journal publications.
• Supporting project planning, milestone tracking, and technical coordination across the lab.
• Mentoring junior team members in software engineering, experimental design, reproducibility, and research communication.
   

A successful candidate will demonstrate strong experience in systems and tool building, algorithmic thinking, research design, and reproducible experimentation. They should be able to move fluidly between software architecture, implementation, experimental evaluation, and research communication. Strong coding skills are essential, particularly in Python, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript, or comparable languages and frameworks. Experience with SQL, declarative programming, data management, databases, visualization tools, HCI methods, AI/ML systems, optimization, or interactive data systems is highly desirable.

Applicants should have a strong record of research and technical output, which may include peer-reviewed publications, open-source projects, deployed systems, research prototypes, technical reports, or major software artifacts. Experience presenting research work clearly and concisely is essential, as the lab meets frequently for short status updates and holds regular technical one-on-one meetings to examine research problems in depth.

Minimum Qualifications
 

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, HCI, AI, Data Systems, or a closely related field.
• At least six years of relevant research, research engineering, or senior technical experience.
• Immediate availability to start the position.
• Strong record of designing and building systems, tools, platforms, or research prototypes.
• Excellent programming ability in Python, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript, or comparable languages.
• Experience with reproducible research practices, GitHub workflows, documentation, and artifact management.
• Ability to evaluate systems through experiments, simulations, benchmarks, or user studies.
• Strong written and oral communication skills, including experience with technical presentations and LaTeX documents.
• Ability to work independently while contributing effectively to a collaborative research environment.