Job location: 3440 Market Street

Employment Type: Full-time
Posted data: 2020-02-07
Req: JR00012865
University Overview

The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school consistently ranks among the top 10 universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report survey. Penn has 12 highly-regarded schools that provide opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, all influenced by Penn’s distinctive interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and learning.

Penn offers a unique working environment within the city of Philadelphia. The University is situated on a beautiful urban campus, with easy access to a range of educational, cultural, and recreational activities. With its historical significance and landmarks, lively cultural offerings, and wide variety of atmospheres, Philadelphia is the perfect place to call home for work and play.

The University offers a competitive benefits package that includes excellent healthcare and tuition benefits for employees and their families, generous retirement benefits, a wide variety of professional development opportunities, supportive work and family benefits, a wealth of health and wellness programs and resources, and much more.

Posted Job Title

Senior Software Engineer, Penn Wharton Budget Model

Job Profile Title

Application Architect

Job Description Summary

The Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) is a non-partisan, research-based initiative that provides accurate, accessible and transparent economic analysis of public policy. Software Engineers build the software applications and systems critical to the group's mission of delivering data-driven economic analyses of public policy. This role will also be responsible for proposing a roadmap for overall technical architecture and leading execution.

Job Description

Software Engineers build the software applications and systems critical to the group's mission of delivering data-driven economic analyses of public policy. Software Engineers work closely with Economists and Research Associates to develop large databases of economic and demographic data, population-scale computational models of economic agents, and data visualization tools that support public policy analysis. Applications developed by Software Engineers enable Economists to advise lawmakers on public policy design and educate the public on the impact of public policy proposals.

In addition, the software engineer will support PWBM in expanding levels of accessibility to the master database and microsimulation model through the end of calendar year 2019 and will transition to additional database-related development or PWBM model architecture development in 2020 depending on organizational needs and strategic priorities. Responsible for proposing a roadmap for overall technical architecture and leading execution.

The ideal candidate for the Software Engineer position has a Bachelor's or Master s degree in a technical discipline, demonstrates strong software development fundamentals, and is capable of working with a range of technologies. Technical experience relevant to the role includes full stack web development, statistical computing, mathematical optimization, and distributed computing. A knowledge of or desire to learn cutting-edge technologies such as GPU computing, Mongo, and SQL is required. An interest in economics and public policy is valued.

Two-year position subject to renewal based on the discretion of faculty director and available funds. This position is contingent on continued funding.

*The University of Pennsylvania posts the full starting salary range for this job family. Starting salary for this position will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, implement, and monitor full web technology stack, including data stores, middleware data models, APIs, and front end applications, all deployed to cloud resources
• Implement and optimize economic models, with an emphasis on computationally intensive mathematical models requiring distributed execution on high performance computing resources
• Lead and mentor junior developers, economists, and research associates in software development work, including conducting design and code reviews
• Build and maintain human and technical systems for collaborative development, including Agile planning, version control, testing, and deployment
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Qualifications:

• A Bachelor's Degree and seven years of experience or equivalent combination of education and experience is required.
• The ideal candidate for the Software Engineer position has a Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical discipline, demonstrates very strong software development fundamentals.
• The candidate is capable of working with a range of technologies, including Python (or R or MATLAB), Java, C++, C#. (It is also advantageous to have experience working with JavaScript libraries/frameworks such as jQuery, AngularJS, or React as well as a knowledge of SQL.) However, on balance, very strong software development fundamentals is more important than current language skills.
• Technical experience relevant to the role includes full stack web development, statistical computing, mathematical optimization, and distributed computing.
• An interest in economics and public policy is valued.
• Must be eager to learn new technologies and explore the best way to solve challenging technical and mathematical problems.

Working Conditions:
Office, library, computer room

Physical Effort:
Typically sitting at a desk or table

More about PWBM

The Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) is a non-partisan, research-based initiative that provides accurate, accessible and transparent economic analysis of public policy. Besides being non-partisan, we are non-normative, in that we do not make policy recommendations. Instead, the intention of the PWBM is to be the honest broker of analysis working at the intersection of business and policy to help policy makers, the public, and businesses make fact-based decisions. PWBM has been influential in many key recent policy discussions, including tax reform, infrastructure, universal basic income, debt and Social Security.

Job Location - City, State

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Department / School

Wharton School

Pay Range

$72,837.00 - $205,981.00

Affirmative Action Statement 
Penn adheres to a policy that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected class.

Special Requirements 
Background check required after a conditional job offer is made. Consideration of the background check will be tailored to the requirements of the job.