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

Job Description

Your responsibilities

Are you a motivated Software Engineer passionate about delivering solutions for large-scale systems with strict performance and reliability requirements? Would you like to participate in the development of a new archiving solution used in almost a thousand mission-critical control systems at CERN? If so, you should join our team to work on the NextGeneration Archiver for WinCC OA, developed in an openlab collaboration with Siemens!

You will join:

• 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.

You will be part of a passionate team working on the NextGeneration Archiver for WinCC OA, which provides an essential feature of every SCADA system: the archiving of historical data so that it can be displayed and analyzed later. The project presents many interesting challenges due to the large volume of processed and stored data, the large scale and distributed nature of the systems, and strict availability and reliability requirements.

The NextGeneration Archiver currently supports storing data in InfluxDB, Oracle, and PostgreSQL through dedicated backends. Your work will focus on developing a new backend for TimescaleDB - a promising open-source time series database, built on top of PostgreSQL.

As a Software Engineer in the Industrial Control Systems group, you will:

• 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.

Your profile

Skills

The following experience/skills are required:

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

The following experience/skills would be a plus:

• 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.

Eligibility criteria:

• 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

Job closing date: 15.07.2025 at 23:59 CEST.

Contract duration: 24 months, with a possible extension up to 36 months maximum.

Working hours: 40 hours per week

Target start date: 01-September-2025

Job reference: BE-ICS-STF-2025-76-GRAP

Field of work: Software Engineering and IT

What we offer

• 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.

About us

At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

We are on a Quest. A Journey into discovery like no other. Bring your expertise to our unique work and develop your knowledge and skills at pace. Join world-class subject matter experts on unique projects, in a Quest for greater knowledge and deeper understanding.

Begin your CERN Quest. Take Part!

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN’s mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.