Project Assistant III, Research

University of Rochester • City of Rochester, NY

8d • $17 - $24

About The Position

As a community, the University of Rochester is defined by a deep commitment to Meliora - Ever Better. Embedded in that ideal are the values we share: equity, leadership, integrity, openness, respect, and accountability. Together, we will set the highest standards for how we treat each other to ensure our community is welcoming to all and is a place where all can thrive. The ROC-HCI Lab is looking for a lab technician with full-stack developer skills to help build and deploy a scalable version of SOPHIE, our research avatar platform. This role focuses on turning research prototypes into stable, production-ready systems that can serve a high volume of users. You will work across backend, frontend, DevOps, and cloud infrastructure.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Computer Engineering or similar technical field
• Demonstrated professional or personal projects working on building and deploying web applications.
• Experience with full-stack development (backend + frontend).
• Strong Python experience; comfort with Flask or willingness to switch frameworks.
• Cloud development experience (AWS preferred).
• Ability to design/call APIs and integrate third-party services.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with scalable architectures (load balancing, caching, async workers).
• Experience deploying ML/LLM pipelines in production.
• Familiarity with Docker, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.), and testing frameworks.
• AWS certification or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong communication skills and comfort working with a research team.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain backend services (Python, Flask, or other frameworks if needed).
• Deploy and maintain web applications on AWS.
• Develop clean, functional front-end interfaces (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap or React).
• Host LLMs and ML models on cloud infrastructure.
• Manage production environments: monitoring, logs, uptime, security basics.
• Support researchers in integrating new prototypes or features.
• Debug issues quickly and ship fixes with minimal friction.
• Other duties as assigned.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 51-100 employees