Date Posted: 10/24/2025
Req ID: 45700
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Arts & Science
Department: Acceleration Consortium
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00058853
Description:
About us:The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada’s leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs. We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world. The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Staff Scientists will advance the infield of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society’s largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics. The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University. This grant will provide the Acceleration Consortium with seven years of funding to execute its vision. The AC is developing seven advanced SDLs. These include: 1. Inorganic solid-state materials, 2. Organic small molecules for advanced materials, 3. Drug discovery with chemicalprobes, 4. Polymers for materials science and biological applications, 5. Formulations for pharmaceuticals, consumer products, and coatings, 6. Biocompatibility (organ-on-a-chip), and 7. Synthetic scale-up of materials and molecules. Your opportunity:As a Software Engineer at the AC, you will focus on developing and maintaining device connectors that enable our seven self-driving laboratories (SDLs) to communicate reliably witha diverse ecosystem of instruments and robots. You will design and implement drivers and API wrappers for laboratory equipment, normalize commands and data across serial/Modbus/MQTT and related protocols, and integrate these connectors into the orchestrator technologies we are deploying. Your work will tackle complex hardware–software communication challenges—latency, synchronization, fault tolerance, and observability—so that closed-loop experiments run safely and at scale, helping to de-risk and democratize SDLs for the global research community.
Your responsibilities will include:
Analyzing, recommending, and designing highly complex software architecture
Analyzing and writing scripts to extract,reformat, and analyze data
Designing, testing, and modifying programming code
Evaluating programming code to ensure it has validity, compatibility, and that it meets appropriate standards
Developing technical application implementation plans
Analyzing, recommending and designing technical solutions for highly complex IT problems
Leading and planning IT projects
Serving as a resource on specific issues to a group of specialists
Essential Qualifications:
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or an acceptable combination of equivalent education and experience; Master’s degree preferred
Minimum five yearsof recent, relevant hands-on experience in software development, particularly in scientific or high-tech environments with significant research and development
Proficiency in Python and its communications/scientific libraries (e.g., pyserial, pymodbus, pandas, NumPy)
Experience with hardware integration, including writing drivers and API wrappers for laboratory equipment
Experience with workflow management tools such as Airflow and Prefect
Familiarity with containerization(Docker) and orchestration systems (Kubernetes)
Experience working in DevSecOps teams
Good working knowledge of other languages such as C, C#, and Bash
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced, research-driven environment
Familiarity with communication protocols (e.g., Modbus, serial, MQTT) and IoT devices.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams
Assets (Nonessential):
Prior experience with MCU programming, electronics, and signal/noise processing
Familiarity with the Arduino and Raspberry Pi ecosystems
Experience integrating and deploying scientific devices in laboratory environments
Proficiency with Linux systems, including command-line tools, shell scripting, and system configuration
Familiarity with scalable data infrastructure (e.g., databases, data pipelines)
A track record of contributing to open-source projects
Prior experience working in multidisciplinary teams involving academia and industry
Familiarity with Industry 4.0 concepts and architecture.
To be successful in this role you will be:
Accountable
Communicator
Efficient
Goal oriented
Insightful
Problem solver
Resilient
This role may be eligible for an Alternative Work Arrangement in accordance with the University of Toronto’s Alternative Work Arrangements Guideline.Closing Date: 11/07/2025, 11:59PM ETEmployee Group: USW Appointment Type: Grant - Continuing Schedule: Full-TimePay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:USW Pay Band 16 -- $103,367. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $132,188. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol. Job Category: Engineering / Technical
Lived Experience StatementCandidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.
