Senior Software Engineer at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

About the job:

The CSIR has a vacancy for a Senior Software Engineer in the Aeronuatic Systems Impact Area within the Defence and Security Cluster. The incumbent will be responsible to provide software engineering development, support and management services to the Experimental Aerodynamics and Wind Tunnel (WT) Facilities Groups, from high-level software architecture to down to low-level software upgrade development and testing. This includes software engineering applicable to the suite of wind tunnel testing facilities plant’s control systems, test environment system, and model test data acquisition systems, as well as project specific software engineering requirements. This position is based in Pretoria.

Key responsibilities:

• Responsible for software engineering design and implementation (requirements definition, software design, development, testing and integration) for wind tunnel facility plant control systems, testing environment control systems, test article control systems, and test article data acquisition systems;
• Plan and manage all software development (projects and tasks) within Experimental Aero and Wind Tunnel Facilities Groups using CSIR ERP systems;
• Resource planning and allocation;
• Lead the development of concept and technology demonstrators, derived from requirements;
• Generate documentation for the developed software products and applications in terms of software development system engineering processes and project reports;
• Research the latest technical developments i.e. researching and proposing new software solutions for diverse application areas within the Wind Tunnel Facilities and Exp Aero groups;
• Collaborate and network with tertiary academic institutions, user groups and forums, locally and internationally;
• Work in the wind tunnel environment as part of a wind tunnel testing team on wind tunnel systems;
• Provide software systems support and troubleshooting during Wind Tunnel test campaigns;
• Evaluate and analyze the software, hardware, and ICT systems currently in the Wind Tunnel Facilities, while identifying areas for modification, improvement and upgrades;
• Create and manage Wind Tunnel Facilities ICT roadmap;
• Provide coaching and mentoring to junior software engineer/s and technologists;

Qualifications, skills and experience:

• A Bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering, computer science or related fields with at least seven years’ experience in software architecture and object-oriented software development, of which five years should be in the following:
  • Hardware interfacing and control;
  • Software systems engineering processes;
• The above working experience should be in real time server and desktop operating system environment;

Must have experience in the following:

• Working with multidisciplinary teams;
• Supervision of junior engineers and technologists;
• UML and related software development and planning methodologies;
• XML markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data;

The following training, knowledge and experience are also required:

• Embedded software development
• Matlab
• Programming languages FORTRAN, C, C++, JAVA
• Experience in network communications
• Experience with PLCs (Siemens and Allen-Bradley) hardware and programming
• Ability to read and draw PLC Ladder Logic diagrams
• Experience with electro-mechanical automation and control