Job Reference
42_26_LS_TBR_RE1
Position
Research Engineer Securing Processing Environments for Analysing Sensitive Data (RE1)
Closing Date
Monday, 09 February, 2026
Reference: 42_26_LS_TBR_RE1
Job title: Research Engineer Securing Processing Environments for Analysing Sensitive Data (RE1)
About BSC
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.
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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.
We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.
If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.
Context And Mission
The Technologies for Biomedical Research Lab (TechBioLab) within the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) brings together specialised teams to enable research activities in the Life Sciences. These teams cover a range of areas, including research data and software, infrastructure for centralized and federated analysis and learning, etc. From a technical perspective, TechBioLab's activities focus on developing infrastructures that support Life Sciences research, including software components for bioinformatics, research data management– especially in healthcare–and scientific and technical benchmarking of research software in close collaboration with various communities and projects. Special attention is given to technological developments enabling the analysis of sensitive data in federated settings. This approach facilitates the generation of AI models without requiring data to be moved from its original site. Complementing these efforts, the lab also contributes to the development of Trusted Research Environments that enable the use of research data on single sites under specific, configurable usage conditions.
The laboratory coordinates the Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute (INB). The Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute (INB) is the major bioinformatics platform in Spain and the Spanish node of ELIXIR. ELIXIR (European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information) is a pan-European organization founded in 2014 which aims to integrate and harmonize European bioinformatics infrastructures. ELIXIR coordinates the participation of more than 22 countries; engages with other strategic European initiatives and projects, e.g. ESFRI, Research Data Alliance, EUDat and EGI; promotes specific training activities and workshops on ELIXIR resources, partners with industry, and play a key role in shaping the bioinformatics landscape. Within ELIXIR, the INB is responsible for the bioinformatics infrastructure offered by Spain and, therefore, should guarantee its alignment with the strategic areas put forward by ELIXIR.
Since 2018, the INB has two overarching objectives: deepen the alignment of its activities with ELIXIR, and increase the translational impact of INB actions towards the Spanish National Health System (SNS). For the latter objective, the INB has created and supports TransBioNet (Translational Bioinformatics Network), which aims to structure, bring together and work with bioinformatics groups in healthcare settings with a particular focus on the Health Research Institutes (IIS) recognized by the ISCIII.
The INB coordinates the Data Science programme within the Spanish Infrastructure for Personalized Medicine associated with Science and Technology (IMPaCT in Spanish), which aims to establish an interoperable framework for biomedical data integration and analysis, addressing questions from clinicians through the implementation of computing systems in health environments. This programme will prepare clinical data in Spain for secondary use, including medical imaging, structured and non-structured clinical data and genomics, considering all the legal provisions for each possible use and setting. This programme will involve the liaison with diverse stakeholders, including hospitals, the ISCIII, companies in the biomedical sector, the Spanish Medicines Agency and biomedical researchers, among others. All developments will be aligned with the European initiatives in the area, including those from ELIXIR, 1+Million Genomes, the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and data-sharing projects such as FAIR4Health, HealthyCloud and TEHDAS. In 2023 the INB, the Spanish Node of ELIXIR, renovated its portfolio of bioinformatics resources, including platforms, databases, individual tools and web-services. This portfolio, known as Service Delivery Plan (SDP), constitutes the scientific-technical contribution of Spain to ELIXIR.
The candidate will join a dynamic Life Sciences department team, working in the highly cooperative, multidisciplinary, distributed context of ELIXIR and INB (Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute/ELIXIR-ES) and related national initiatives, such as TransBioNet.
Existing and upcoming regulations, like the European Health Data Space, Data Governance Act or Artifficial Intelligence Act, will accelerate existing technological developments to facilitate the analysis of sensitive data (e.g. patient-level data, IPR-protected data, etc…) in dedicated environments for that end. In this context, the INB Computational Node has developed a virtual research environment (openVRE) that is being utilised in various projects at local, national and European projects. The openVRE offers a controlled, sandboxed environment where incoming and outgoing data is pre-configured as well as the software, either individual tools or complete analytical pipelines, and the management of users. This major development is completed by WfExS ) which is a high-level workflow orchestrator designed to facilitate the analysis of sensitive data. WfExS implements community-driven standards to facilitate the technical interoperability with other existing solutions in the community.
Currently, those pieces are brought together as part of the EU-funded EOSC-ENTRUST project (https://eosc-), which aims to build a blueprint at European level interconnecting different Secure Processing Environments (sometimes referred as Trusted Research Environments) taking into account different deployment scenarios, maturation levels and users requirements. Thus, the objective is, therefore, to bring together all existing technological components, incorporate the regulatory perspective and make the necessary developments to upgrade existing technological products or create new ones if necessary, having into account that any development should be sustainable and highly flexible to facilitate its broad use across projects and deployment scenarios.
Este contrato se encuentra financiado por el proyecto "DESARROLLO DE MODELOS DEL LENGUAJE EN EL MARCO DEL PLAN NACIONAL DE TECNOLOGÍAS DEL LENGUAJE, EL PERTE DE NUEVA ECONOMÍA DE LA LENGUA Y EL PLAN DE RECUPERACIÓN, TRANSFORMACIÓN Y RESILIENCIA- FINANCIADO POR LA UNIÓN EUROPEA – NEXTGENERATION EU", con referencia externa 2023EtL00054, promovido por la Secretaría de Estado de Digitalización e Inteligencia Artificial (SEDIA), cuyos fondos provienen del Ministerio para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública, financiado por la Unión Europea-NextGenerationEU».
Key Duties
* Design, develop and maintain secure Virtual Research Environments and Trusted Research Environments to enable compliant analysis of sensitive data in national and European research projects.
* Integrate and evolve existing platforms and tools developed at the Lab ensuring interoperability and alignment with community standards.
* Implement and assess secure data access, transfer and communication mechanisms between Secure Processing Environments and data repositories.
* Translate regulatory and policy requirements (e.g. European Health Data Space, Data Governance Act, Artificial Intelligence Act) into concrete technical solutions.
* Contribute to European and national projects, including the definition of reference architectures and deployment models, coordination with partners, and preparation of technical deliverables and reports.
* Apply best practices in research software engineering to ensure sustainability, quality and reuse of developed solutions.
Requirements
* Education
* MSc degree in data-driven fields or computer science engineering.
* Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
* Experience in software engineering and DevOps practices in Linux-based environments, including containerisation technologies and automation of software deployment workflows.
* Experience working with CI/CD pipelines and reproducible and maintainable research software practices.
* Hands-on experience with HPC or research computing infrastructures.
* Practical experience in configuring and maintaining reproducible software environments to support research activities.
* Professional working proficiency in English.
* Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
* Experience working in a research or academic computing environment, preferably within large-scale or European research infrastructures.
* Knowledge of cloud and infrastructure-as-code technologies.
* Experience with relational and non-relational databases.
* Familiarity with data analysis and visualisation tools.
* Experience contributing to collaborative projects using issue tracking and project management tools.
* Knowledge of, or interest in, secure data processing environments, sensitive data handling, or regulated research domains (e.g. healthcare, biomedical research).
* Competences
* Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to design robust technical solutions for complex research environments.
* Ability to work independently while contributing effectively to multidisciplinary teams in an international research setting.
* Capacity to adapt quickly to new technologies, standards and regulatory requirements.
* Good communication skills, including the ability to document technical work and interact with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
* Motivation to contribute to European and national research projects and to support open, sustainable research infrastructures.
Conditions
* The position will be located at BSC within the Life Sciences Department
* We offer a full-time contract (37.5h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures
* Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration
* Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
* Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
* Starting date: 01/03/2026
Applications procedure and process
All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain:
* A full CV in English including contact details
* A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.
Development of the recruitment process
The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:
* Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
* Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.
The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.
In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.
The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.
At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment [at] bsc [dot] es.
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Deadline
The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.
OTM-R principles for selection processes
BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc.
BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law.
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