Software Engineer for the DeepInverse Open Source Library

Software Engineer for the DeepInverse Open Source Library

Level of qualifications required : PhD or equivalent

Fonction : Temporary scientific engineer

Level of experience : From 3 to 5 years

About the research centre or Inria department

The Inria research centre in Lyon is the 9th Inria research centre, formally created in January 2022. It brings together approximately 410 people in 20 research teams and research support services.

Its staff are distributed in Villeurbanne, Lyon Gerland, and Saint‑Etienne.

The Lyon centre is active in the fields of software, distributed and high‑performance computing, embedded systems, quantum computing and privacy in the digital world, but also in digital health and computational biology.

Context

DeepInverse is the open‑source PyTorch‑based library for solving imaging inverse problems with deep learning. The library implements the entire image reconstruction framework, including efficient forward operators, defining and solving variational problems and designing and training advanced neural networks, for a wide set of domains (medical imaging, astronomical imaging, remote sensing, computational photography, compressed sensing and more). DeepInverse is part of the official PyTorch ecosystem, and is currently used by thousands of imaging scientists and engineers across the world.

The candidate will be affiliated with the Experimentation and Development Service of INRIA Lyon and hosted at ENS Lyon (46 allée de l’Italie, Lyon, France).

Assignment

Deep learning for imaging is revolutionising science, healthcare and engineering, for example by accelerating medical imaging. By contributing to DeepInverse, you will be building and working with cutting‑edge tools and algorithms for bringing AI to real‑world applications, including diffusion models, foundation models, advanced imaging devices etc. Every day, you will apply skills in engineering, applied math and modern open‑source Python programming.

You will also join the vibrant open‑source DeepInverse community and participate in France‑based and international events such as hackathons and workshops, and will be invited to give tutorials at summer schools, workshops and other events. You will work in close collaboration with an international team of maintainers. Moreover, you will have access to state‑of‑the‑art GPUs via the Inria ABACA and Jean Zay servers, to train or inference state‑of‑the‑art deep learning models for image reconstruction. As part of ENS Lyon, you will access weekly AI seminars and other regular workshops. Finally, you will also have the opportunity to contribute to scientific publications showcasing use cases of the library.

Main activities

Main Activity (approximately 80% of time)

• Contribute new reconstruction algorithms, imaging operators and benchmarks.
• Review pull‑requests and manage issues.
• Write documentation and new examples for new algorithms, use‑cases or datasets.
• Improve and maintain the continuous integration.
• Participate in weekly meetings with maintainers.

Other Activities (approximately 20% of time):

• Participate in the organization of hackathons.
• Participate in tutorials in summer schools, workshops and other hackathons
• Lead training programs for industrial partners
• Develop targeted solutions for non‑academic partners
• Integrate with other open‑source libraries (e.g. LazyLinops, etc)
• Represent the library within the P16 program

Skills

Mandatory skills:

• Expertise on imaging inverse problems, computer vision or related fields.
• Native proficiency in Python and PyTorch, especially applied to computer vision.
• Working with and engineering scientific datasets
• Strong expertise on modern open‑source development (GitHub), including continuous integration (pytest, doctest, docker), collaborative version control, and writing high quality documentation
• Be highly independent and proactive, with excellent communication skills
• Be collaborative and work well in an asynchronous international team
• Having working proficiency in English

Desired (but not mandatory) skills:

• Having contributed to DeepInverse in the past
• Experience with CI management tools (GitHub Actions, Sphinx and Sphinx‑Gallery).
• Experience with CUDA and/or other parallel computing frameworks
• Having conducted research on imaging inverse problems and/or deep learning applied to inverse problems
• Be proficient in French

Benefits package

• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking (90 days / year) and flexible organization of working hours
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage under conditions

Remuneration

Between €2,692 and €3,404 gross per month, depending on experience and qualifications, in accordance with the salary scale for contract engineers.

Warning : you must enter your e‑mail address in order to save your application to Inria. Applications must be submitted online on the Inria website. Processing of applications sent from other channels is not guaranteed.

Instruction to apply

Applications must be submitted online via the Inria website. Processing of applications submitted via other channels is not guaranteed.

Defence security:

This position is likely to be assigned to a restricted area (ZRR), as defined in decree no. 2011‑1425 relating to the protection of the nation's scientific and technical potential (PPST). Authorisation to access a zone is issued by the head of the establishment, following a favourable ministerial opinion, as defined in the decree of 03 July 2012 relating to the PPST. An unfavourable ministerial opinion for a post assigned to a ZRR would result in the recruitment being cancelled.

Defence Security : This position is likely to be situated in a restricted area (ZRR), as defined in Decree No. 2011‑1425 relating to the protection of national scientific and technical potential (PPST). Authorisation to enter an area is granted by the director of the unit, following a favourable Ministerial decision, as defined in the decree of 3 July 2012 relating to the PPST. An unfavourable Ministerial decision in respect of a position situated in a ZRR would result in the cancellation of the appointment.

Recruitment Policy : As part of its diversity policy, all Inria positions are accessible to people with disabilities.

Success in this role requires a strong combination of expertise in imaging inverse problems and Python/PyTorch development, together with a genuine open‑source software mindset. The candidate should be highly autonomous, proactive, and rigorous, while also being able to collaborate effectively within an international asynchronous team. A strong commitment to code quality, documentation, continuous integration, and scientific communication will also be essential.

About Inria

Inria is the French national research institute dedicated to digital science and technology. It employs 2,600 people. Its 200 agile project teams, generally run jointly with academic partners, include more than 3,500 scientists and engineers working to meet the challenges of digital technology, often at the interface with other disciplines. The Institute also employs numerous talents in over forty different professions. 900 research support staff contribute to the preparation and development of scientific and entrepreneurial projects that have a worldwide impact.