Software Engineer (BE-ICS-STF-2025-76-GRAP)

Job Description

• The Beams Department (BE), responsible for the beam generation, acceleration, diagnostics, controls, and performance optimization for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its injector accelerators.
• The Industrial Control Systems Group (ICS), responsible for providing technology, frameworks, engineering, and CERN-wide support for systems and projects in all domains where standard industrial control solutions can be used.
• The SCADA Technologies and Frameworks Section (STF), responsible for the development, deployment, and maintenance of the frameworks and technologies used in the supervisory layer of control systems.

• Be part of the team of engineers at CERN and Siemens working in collaboration on shaping the future data archiving solutions for WinCC OA SCADA systems.
• Participate in the complete software development lifecycle, from gathering requirements to deployment and support.
• Design a schema for TimescaleDB that provides the best performance for our use case.
• Develop a backend to support both writing to and querying data from the selected TimescaleDB schema.
• Work on the tools and infrastructure used for automated end-to-end testing of the archiver, including performance, long-term, stress, and fuzz tests.
• Provide tools for deployment and configuration of the new archiving solution and share knowledge with system experts and users.

• Modern C++.
• Relational databases, including performance aspects.
• Software design and architecture principles and patterns.
• Good software development practices and workflows.

• Debugging and profiling tools for C++.
• Multithreaded and distributed programming.
• DevOps and CI with GitLab or similar platforms.
• Python.
• gRPC, ZeroMQ, and Protocol Buffers.
• WinCC OA or other SCADA software.
• Spoken and written English or French, with a commitment to learn the basics of the other language.

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State .
• You have a professional background in Software Engineer (or a related field) and have either:
  • a Master’s degree with 2 to 6 years of post-graduation professional experience;
  • or a PhD with no more than 3 years of post-graduation professional experience.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.

Additional Information

• A monthly stipend ranging between 6287 and 6911 Swiss Francs per month (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN’s comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: installation grant; family, child and infant allowances; payment of travel expenses at the beginning and end of contract.
• 30 days of paid leave per year.
• On-the-job and formal training at CERN as well as in-house language courses for English and/or French.