Full Stack Developer Contract Jobs in Chicago, IL

Department
Globus Labs
About the Department
Globus (www.globus.org) is a sustainable, non-profit unit within The University of Chicago delivering solutions to the research community worldwide. Globus develops and provides critical services that support scientific research for governmental, academic, and commercial organizations in a wide range of disciplines including life sciences, physics, and astronomy. We develop and operate commercial-quality, cloud-based software application and platform services used by 10s of thousands of researchers to manage their large-and growing-data management challenges. We have offices located at the NBC Tower in the heart of downtown Chicago and remote employees who work-from-home. Globus, together with Globus Labs, a research group within the University of Chicago, and part of the Data Science and Learning Division at Argonne National Labs, develop and deploy cutting edge technologies to solve new challenges facing the scientific community and enable break-through scientific discoveries.
Job Summary
As a member of the Globus team, the candidate will contribute to the design and development of hybrid agentic middleware. This is a full-stack engineering role focused on building production-quality cloud services that are used by thousands of researchers and serve as critical components in major U.S. cross-agency data and AI for Science initiatives. The candidate will also collaborate with domain scientists to develop and deploy agentic systems that address real-world challenges in materials science, chemistry, biology, X-ray science, and related fields.
The successful candidate will play a key role in both the development and application of agentic middleware, working closely with a multidisciplinary team of software engineers and researchers. Responsibilities include designing and implementing full-stack applications, spanning backend services, APIs, and open-source software, with a primary focus on Python-based, scalable, and robust systems deployed in cloud environments. The role involves building, deploying, and managing cloud-native services, ensuring reliability, performance, and usability in production settings.
The candidate will ensure that all research and development activities comply with institutional, state, and federal policies and regulations, and will disseminate results through presentations at meetings and conferences. In addition, they will independently initiate and lead new efforts in collaboration with the Globus and Globus Labs teams-spanning problem identification, project conceptualization, proposal development, and successful implementation and delivery.
Responsibilities

• Contribute to development of software infrastructure to support creation of agentic systems.
• Deploy and operate cloud hosted services for use by the research community.
• Build relationships with other AI/ML and data infrastructure community efforts.
• Define key directions to keep UChicago at the forefront of AI/ML and national data infrastructure.
• Ensure compliance of research activities with institutional, state, and federal regulatory policies, procedures, directives, and mandates.
• Present findings at meetings and/ or conferences.
• Lead the definition and documentation of requirements, architecture and design of secure, scalable, asynchronous, agentic systems, based on knowledge of principles of API design, asynchronous processes, service deployment and delivering highly available services. Define technical direction, and provide leadership for product initiatives. Engage with other leaders in the organization to develop end-to-end architecture and high-level systems designs. Prepare plans to translate business requirements into well-designed applications while balancing user and business needs, technical competencies, industry developments, and time constraints.
• Maintain a leadership role in the AI/ML and data infrastructure community. Build and maintain knowledge of relevant software technologies being developed and/or used in scientific and commercial communities; contribute to team coordination and development activities, including project planning, project reporting, and recruitment.
• Designs new systems, features, and tools. Solves complex problems and identifies opportunities for technical improvement and performance optimization. Reviews and tests code to ensure appropriate standards are met.
• Utilizes technical knowledge of existing and emerging technologies, including public cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications
Education:
Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
Work Experience:
Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 5-7 years of work experience in a related job discipline.
Certifications:
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Preferred Qualifications
Experience:

• Relevant programming experience developing, implementing, debugging, and maintaining applications with Python.
• Experience working with high performance computers (e.g., parallelizing and distributing code).
• Experience in distributed data management and workflow systems.
• Experience leading the design, development and publication of innovative projects in AI/ML solutions.

Preferred Competencies

• Ability to build systems where agents operate with independence, make decisions, and execute complex workflows.
• Expertise in engineering modular, dynamic workflows for agents, breaking problems into sub-tasks and designing feedback loops for ongoing improvement.
• Understanding of patterns, where multiple agents collaborate and specialize within larger systems for scalability and robustness.
• Competence in equipping agents with planning capabilities, persistent memory across sessions/tasks, and causal/logical reasoning to enhance autonomy and effectiveness.

Working Conditions

• Ability to work in a team environment.
• Remote position with some onsite requirements for team meetings and site visits.
• Requires the ability to work independently.

Application Documents

• Resume (required)

When applying, the document(s) MUST be uploaded via the My Experience page, in the section titled Application Documents of the application.
Job Family
Information Technology
Role Impact
Individual Contributor
Scheduled Weekly Hours
37.5
Drug Test Required
No
Health Screen Required
No
Motor Vehicle Record Inquiry Required
No
Pay Rate Type
Salary
FLSA Status
Exempt
Pay Range
$100,000.00 - $150,000.00
The included pay rate or range represents the University's good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.
Benefits Eligible
Yes
The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.
Posting Statement
The University of Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or expression, national or ethnic origin, shared ancestry, age, status as an individual with a disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination.
Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-5800 or submit a request via Applicant Inquiry Form.
All offers of employment are contingent upon a background check that includes a review of conviction history. A conviction does not automatically preclude University employment. Rather, the University considers conviction information on a case-by-case basis and assesses the nature of the offense, the circumstances surrounding it, the proximity in time of the conviction, and its relevance to the position.
The University of Chicago's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report (Report) provides information about University offices and programs that provide safety support, crime and fire statistics, emergency response and communications plans, and other policies and information. The Report can be accessed online at: http://securityreport.uchicago.edu. Paper copies of the Report are available, upon request, from the University of Chicago Police Department, 850 E. 61st Street, Chicago, IL 60637.