This is an informal announcement of a possible position for an intermediate programmer with 2-3 years of experience in Ruby and C in the SF Bay Area. We are not sure yet if we will hire a full-time permanent person, or a part-time contractor for a 10 month project. Salary level for the full-time permanent position would likely be around 50-60K/year with university benefits. The contract rate would be adjusted upwards accordingly, but without benefits (AFAIK). This is really just an early "heads up". You're welcome to contact us, but the formal hiring process will probably not start for several months, and is dependent on funding. ====== Skills ====== Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an acceptable substitute.) GUI: Experienced with some GUI toolkit, pref. in Ruby. Completed at least one substantial GUI project. (We have used Fox and Tk in previous projects.) C: 1 year of professional work in C is preferred. Edu: BA in CS/EE, or other field of engineering or science. Also good to have: * OpenGL * Data modeling, database * Experience working in science/engineering * Interest or experience in traffic simulation (in particular, Paramics, though that's rather unlikely) * Interest in future of public transit * Some Windows development experience (MSVC). We develop for Windows, Linux, and Sun, but most users are on Windows. For this position, most development can be done on any platform that supports ruby and the selected GUI toolkit. * Some basic web site design and programming. ================ Responsibilities ================ The project is to continue development of a tool for modeling, simulation, and visualization of "bus rapid transit" (BRT) systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit). We are applying for FTA funding for about 10 months of work. Your role on the project will round out a team of 2 or 3 others, and will emphasize developing GUI tools that can be used by transit planners to design models of transit corridors and to conduct experiments based on simulations to evaluate the effectiveness of BRT options. Corridor models are stored in a hierarchical modeling languag called BRTML. Background on the project is at http://path.berkeley.edu/SMARTBRT. (There's software there, too, but it won't do anything useful unless you have Paramics, which is an expensive traffic simulation tool.) There will also be a GUI to interact with the running simulations and display event data, graphs, etc. The organization is California PATH, UC Berkeley, http://www.path.berkeley.edu, located at the Richmond Field Station, a 20 minute drive from campus. We do transportation research on a mix of federal, state, and industry funding, with an emphasis on using new technologies to improve the safety and performance of traffic and transit. Our group of about 50-60 people interacts closely with faculty and students in the College of Engineering. Sometimes we even get on the evening news (http://www2.cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_039192718.html). PATH has an interesting mix of people: engineers specializing in real-time systems, radios and wireless networking, sensors, automotive control, human factors; software people, both real-time and "soft"; automotive safety researchers; applied mathematicians; cognitive scientists. The organization is fairly flat and relaxed; it's about halfway between an academic department and a small engineering R&D company. The biggest downside of working here is the cost of living in the bay area, but you get what you pay for. Also, all of our funding is soft, so even "permanent" employees have no real job security (but turnover is very low). -- Joel VanderWerf California PATH, UC Berkeley mailto:vjoel / path.berkeley.edu Ph. (510) 231-9446 http://www.path.berkeley.edu FAX (510) 231-9565