We have vacancies for a range of full-time projects to be run during the summer vacation 2023.
We expect to run 3-4 projects over the summer. Provisional project information is given below, but expect the information to change as we move closer to the summer period.
We’ll open for applications in late March 2023.
Details of the Posts
The projects will run across the summer vacation, starting in mid-June and lasting from between 10 to 13 weeks. All posts are full-time posts, requiring 35 hours per week of work.
The base pay rate is £11.06 per hour, with an additional holiday payment on top of this. Payment is made monthly in arrears.
It is expected that the projects will be run on campus but with some scope for flexible and hybrid working. Each team will set their own core hours when all team members must be present on campus and available for work. For example, typical core hours for Imago teams are 10.00am to 3.00pm. Additional hours are worked at a time and place convenient to each team member.
The posts are open to any undergraduate student studying at the University of Manchester who is eligible to work in the UK, including students who will graduate this summer. Note that students must be resident in the UK for the duration of the project to be eligible for the work.
We especially welcome applications from members of groups who are under-represented in the software engineering profession. We aim to recruit diverse teams for Imago, containing a mixture of experienced team members and inexperienced but talented junior team members. Working for Imago is a great way to bootstrap your personal portfolio and add some real development experience to your CV.
The Projects
MelonTech Phase II
We have vacancies for 3-4 developers to further build software for MelonTech, a University of Manchester research start-up that is developing tools to help patients with Congenital Hyperinsulinism (CHI). One treatment approach is to use Continuous Glucose Monitoring, in which an in-body monitor reports glucose levels to a central server. The research that MelonTech is based on uses new approaches to analysing and visualising the glucose results, to help patients better manage their condition by linking lifestyle choices to incidents of high blood glucose.
The project will involve further expanding the toolset needed by MelonTech’s own experts, their clients and the end-users of the tool. It is expected that trials with real users will be run during the project, and marketing/sales materials (such as demo videos of the tools) may need to be created.
The project will give experience in building tools for medical data in a SaaS environment, as well as interacting with clients to support the early stage development of a research-based startup. Applicants should have excellent programming and system design skills, and an interest in learning how to write code that meets regulatory and ethical guidelines, as well as being thoroughly tested.
The project is expected to run for 13 weeks from mid-June.
Projects for the University of Manchester Innovation Factory
We expect to have vacancies for 2 teams of 4 full-time developers for projects to support clients of the University of Manchester’s Innovation Factory. The Innovation Factory is the part of the University that supports academics and researchers in commercialising their research, to bring the benefits to a wider audience.
Funding has been secured to run 2 full time projects over the summer for high-priority Innovation Factory clients. The projects will run from mid-June and will last from 10 to 13 weeks.
The exact skills needed for the projects will depend upon the clients for each project. Past Innovation Factory projects have run design sprints and technical spikes for clients, have helped to harden and increase the quality of existing code bases, and have created proof-of-concept prototypes for start-ups and social enterprises.
Part-Time Imago Support Roles
We have some all-year-round part-time roles for students interested in helping with the general running of Imago.
These are 10-12 month posts, running from summer 2023 to summer 2024. The successful applicant will be expected to undertake a minimum of 80 hours of paid work across the year, though these can be claimed flexibly as demand and the student’s availability and eligibility to work allows. Small numbers of additional hours may be claimed at periods of high demand.
Applicants who can only take the posts for a part of the year are welcomed, though we will give priority to applications from students who can cover more of the period, where the skill sets and suitability for the posts are otherwise equal.
(We are still in the process of finalising the finance and approval of these posts, so they are currently only provisionally offered.)
Delivery Engineer
This part-time role is aimed at keeping the systems Imago creates for its clients running effectively and at helping Imago to develop a suitable technical and skills infrastructure for cost-effective software delivery.
Since we mainly deploy software for Imago clients through either Docker or cloud-based hosting services (like Netlify and Heroku), the role will involve gaining skills in managing systems deployed on these platforms, and in the tools needed to keep the costs of maintaining them low.
As well as responding to client/user reported problems with systems. the role will involve helping Imago to select, acquire and configure a suite of DevOps tools to allow us to provide professional quality technical support and service level agreements to those clients who sign up for our extended maintenance contracts.
A final element of the role is to act as a DevOps advocate for Imago. The delivery engineer will work with our teams to help them quickly acquire the skills they need to create and deploy high quality, maintainable systems.
This post would suit any student who has an interest in modern DevOps technologies, and who is willing to take on the challenge of maintaining a variety of systems on different platforms created by other people. A mix of strong technical skills with good communication skills will be needed by the successful applicant.
Publicity Engineer
This client-facing post involves supporting Imago project teams in creating publicity and marketing materials to help promote the client’s projects and the work of Imago in progressing the client’s goals. This typically involves helping Imago team members to write blog posts and articles about the projects, creating demo and project overview videos for our YouTube channel, and finding suitable new publicity channels for clients, beyond the current Imago social media tools.
As well as project-specific publicity and marketing tasks, the role will also involve the management of Imago’s publicity in general, helping us to present a professional and clear face to prospective clients, to bring in funding for future Imago projects.
The post will suit any student who has good graphic design skills, the ability to write clear descriptions of technical artefacts for a general audience, and the imagination to help us find new ways of engaging the public with the work of Imago and our clients.
More information about Imago can be found at imago.cs.manchester.ac.uk.