Research engineer - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Department of Peace and Conflict Research was established in 1971 to conduct peace research and offer courses in peace and conflict studies. Currently approx. 90 persons are employed at the Department and approximately 1000 students are enrolled every academic year. Courses offered include undergraduate and post-graduate courses, as well as a Ph. D. programme. For more information, visit www.pcr.uu.se

Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University is the world's leading provider of data on organized violence, and the program is a unique source of information about conflicts worldwide and has been at the Department since the 1980s.

The Department and UCDP is now looking for a permanent, full time/100% research engineer. 

Duties
As a UCDP research engineer you one core task will be to be a technical liaison between UCDP, AI researchers and computational linguists in the development of automated coding procedures for conflict data. This includes training AI researchers in UCDP systems, procedures and conceptual frameworks, as well as writing scripts, preparing and formatting data, working with data annotation, and so on. In the near future this will specifically include collaborating with the Peace Science Infrastructure at the University of Oslo to generate a standardized actor list and the means to update this; develop tools to build and maintain a searchable corpus of freely available source data; and help develop a back-end database to record the exact elements (i.e. sentence), from the source material (i.e. text) that was underlying a given coding.

The second core task is to develop tailored programs/script to generate and process UCDP products (mainly datasets and text). This includes cooperating with programmers and data managers at external data infrastructures of which UCDP is a part. It may also include developing applications of existing NLP methods (e.g. LLMs) to rationalize or otherwise improve UCDP products and operations.

Finally, collecting and coding information on organized violence from open sources and writing text in English will also be a core part of this position. The data collection work follows the fixed coding rules and conceptualizations of the UCDP, and is made in a small group, where a high degree of independent analytical capacity is expected. We believe participating in, and thus having a deep understanding of, UCDP’s data collection activities is a prerequisite for being able to both bridge the gap to AI researcher, to develop tailored scripts, and to identify opportunities for rationalizing UCDP’s work.

Other tasks may also be included depending on UCDP needs.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in peace and conflict studies, international relations or other relevant field
• Good knowledge of political violence and theories of peace and conflict
• Documented experience of working with conflict data (coding/data management)
• A good understanding of news reporting in mass media and elsewhere, including documented experience working with source evaluation
• Documented experience/knowledge of programming and programming languages, especially Python and common web technologies (HTML, Javascript, CSS)
• Documented experience/knowledge of backend-solutions, including using SQL databases and tailored API:s (e.g. FastAPI, OpenAPI)
• Documented experience/knowledge of working with Linux-systems, servers, Open Source code and repositories for code
• Documented experience/knowledge on data visualization (on Python/R or software like Tableau, Power BI etc.)
• Excellent oral and written proficiency in English
• Ability to work across disciplines and in collaboration with others
• Strong analytical skills
• Good ability to work both collaboratively and independently
• The ability to quickly adapt and familiarize yourself with new technical solutions.

Additional qualifications

• Experience with research communication and relevant software(Adobe Photoshop, InDesign etc.).

Individual suitability will be strongly considered.

Application:
The application should contain a short personal letter (max 1 A4 page), a CV, and copies of your degree/s as well as transcripts.

About the employment:
The employment is: a permanent position. Scope of employment: 100 %. Starting date: 1 November 2023, or as agreed. Placement: Uppsala.

For further information about the position: Magnus Öberg, magnus.oberg@pcr.uu.se

Please submit your application by 9 oktober 2023, UFV-PA 2023/3461.