Research Engineer (1-year contract), SMU Urban Institute

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Singapore Management University is a place where high-level professionalism blends together with a healthy informality. The 'family-like' atmosphere among the SMU community fosters a culture where employees work, plan, organise and play together - building a strong collegiality and morale within the university.

Our commitment to attract and retain talent is ongoing. We offer attractive benefits and welfare, competitive compensation packages, and generous professional development opportunities - all to meet the work-life needs of our staff. No wonder, then, that SMU continues to be given numerous awards and recognition for its human resource excellence.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The SMU Urban Institute is a university-level research institute dedicated to advancing an interdisciplinary research agenda. Leveraging SMU's strategic position as a dynamic management university in Singapore's city centre, the Institute aims to make a meaningful impact through the study of Asian cities. We are currently seeking individuals with specific skillsets to support the various ongoing projects at the Institute.

• Own and develop a research simulation platform that evaluates drone operations versus ground transportation options, including its geospatial data pipeline, discrete-event simulation, cost model and automated test suite.
• Extend model fidelity in identified areas: vehicle capacity, demand generation, routing, wind and no-fly constraints, and validate output against comparable published studies.
• Build, calibrate and validate new case-study geographies, delivery use cases, and regulatory constraints such as beyond-visual-line-of-sight rules and airspace restrictions.
• Other duties as assigned.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial or Transportation Engineering, Geoinformatics, or a closely related quantitative discipline.
• Relevant experience in the form of thesis, capstone, internship, or substantial open-source project work.
• Demonstrable evidence of independently building non-trivial software that the candidate can discuss and defend in technical detail.
• Prior experience in a research environment, or co-authorship of a technical publication or preprint.
• Excellent coding ability and experience in Python or Java, with sound software engineering fundamentals, including Git, automated testing, environment management, and clear technical documentation.
• Discrete-event simulation (SimPy or equivalent) or agent-based modelling.
• Geospatial analysis, including OpenStreetMap data, GeoPandas, NetworkX, coordinate reference systems and routing on road networks.
• Operations research methods such as vehicle routing, set covering, facility location, and heuristic or exact optimisation.
• Web development sufficient to build and maintain a data-driven interactive map or dashboard.

Candidates are not expected to meet every desirable criterion; general engineering ability, quantitative judgment and evident capacity to learn quickly weigh more heavily than a checklist match.

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