Research Engineer II – Coordination & API Development

About the role

The Air Traffic Management Research Institute (ATMRI) at Nanyang Technological University is looking for a Research Engineer II to lead the design and implementation of coordination and API components for its air‑traffic simulation platform. You will work on real‑time data synchronization, controller‑enhancement tools and prototype integration to support human‑in‑the‑loop experiments up to Technology Readiness Level 4.

Key responsibilities

• Design and develop a Coordination Server that synchronises flight data, hand‑overs and sector updates.
• Expose RESTful and WebSocket APIs for GUI clients and pseudo‑role agents.
• Create stateful coordination flows such as conflict‑resolution logs, hand‑over events and timeout handling.
• Collaborate with the Simulation Engineer to ingest data from discrete‑event simulation software via TCP/IP sockets or APIs.
• Implement lightweight in‑memory coordination middleware (e.g., Redis, optional MQTT).
• Build mock data generators and unit tests for isolated component validation.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Minimum 7 years of professional experience in backend development.
• Strong expertise in Python, preferably with FastAPI or Flask.
• Deep experience building real‑time WebSocket and API services.
• Familiarity with Pub/Sub architectures and inter‑process communication.
• Comfortable working in a lab‑prototype environment with minimal external dependencies.
• Experience with simulation or spatial systems (aviation or robotics) is a plus.

Required skills

• Python
• FastAPI
• Flask
• RESTful API development
• WebSocket programming
• Pub/Sub patterns
• TCP/IP socket integration
• Redis
• MQTT (optional)
• Flask‑SocketIO
• Unit testing and mock data generation