TEMP-Lab/Research Support (School of Interactive Computing)

Georgia Tech prides itself on its technological resources, collaborations, high-quality student body, and its commitment to building an outstanding and diverse community of learning, discovery, and creation. We strongly encourage applicants whose values align with our institutional values, as outlined in our Strategic Plan. These values include academic excellence, diversity of thought and experience, inquiry and innovation, collaboration and community, and ethical behavior and stewardship. Georgia Tech has policies to promote a healthy work-life balance and is aware that attracting faculty may require meeting the needs of two careers.

About Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech is a top-ranked public research university situated in the heart of Atlanta, a diverse and vibrant city with numerous economic and cultural strengths. The Institute serves more than 45,000 students through top-ranked undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs in engineering, computing, science, business, design, and liberal arts. Georgia Tech's faculty attracted more than $1.4 billion in research awards this past year in fields ranging from biomedical technology to artificial intelligence, energy, sustainability, semiconductors, neuroscience, and national security. Georgia Tech ranks among the nation's top 20 universities for research and development spending and No. 1 among institutions without a medical school.

Georgia Tech's Mission and Values
Georgia Tech's mission is to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute has nine key values that are foundational to everything we do:
1. Students are our top priority.
2. We strive for excellence.
3. We thrive on diversity.
4. We celebrate collaboration.
5. We champion innovation.
6. We safeguard freedom of inquiry and expression.
7. We nurture the wellbeing of our community.
8. We act ethically.
9. We are responsible stewards.

Over the next decade, Georgia Tech will become an example of inclusive innovation, a leading technological research university of unmatched scale, relentlessly committed to serving the public good; breaking new ground in addressing the biggest local, national, and global challenges and opportunities of our time; making technology broadly accessible; and developing exceptional, principled leaders from all backgrounds ready to produce novel ideas and create solutions with real human impact.

The College of Computing was established in 1990 as the first such College at a public university and the second in the United States. Since that time, the college has grown into a world-class leader in research and education. The graduate CS program is currently ranked 6th and the undergraduate 5th nationally by U.S. News and World Report. The College consists of five Schools that provide specialized and general computing education to the entire campus. With over 16-degree programs, including its world-renowned online MS in CS, we believe the College to be the largest Computing unit in the United States and, as such, one of the largest producers of computationalist at all levels and of all demographic backgrounds. The College is a part of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a unit of the University System of Georgia and is primarily located in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia.

Provide support services in the operation and maintenance of an academic or research laboratory to include performing analyses; setup, operation, maintenance and cleaning of equipment; and maintaining stock of supplies. Specific duties will be determined based on assignment and unit needs. This position will interact on a consistent basis with: academic and/or research faculty members, staff and students This position typically will advise and counsel: lab users This position will supervise: NA

Job Duty 1 -
Setup, operate and maintain instruments and other equipment used in performing lab tests and experiments.

Job Duty 2 -
Order supplies and materials as required; maintain records.

Job Duty 3 -
Setup laboratory media/equipment for demonstrations.

Job Duty 4 -
May clean instruments, glassware and other lab equipment.

Job Duty 5 -
Prepare and process laboratory samples for use in assigned tests.

Job Duty 6 -
Perform other duties as assigned

Additional Responsibilities

Position Summary:

We seek a full-time Research Engineer to lead the technical infrastructure and data coordination for a funded digital mental health project focused on adolescent suicide prevention. The successful candidate will oversee data ingestion and processing pipelines for large-scale, consented social media datasets from adolescents, ensuring alignment with electronic health records and behavioral assessments from a major healthcare system Atlanta. The role requires close collaboration with clinical researchers and graduate students, and plays a critical part in enabling the projects computational and intervention-focused aims.

Key Job Duties:

• Data Infrastructure Development and Maintenance:
  • Build and maintain scalable systems for secure ingestion, parsing, de-identification, and structuring of multimodal social media data (video, image, text).
  • Implement automated pipelines for mapping social media timelines to clinical episodes derived from electronic health records (EHRs)
• Clinical Coordination and Technical Support:
  • Serve as primary technical liaison with health system research coordinators.
  • Support participant data donation workflows, troubleshoot upload issues, and ensure fidelity in data capture.
• Metadata and Integrity Management:
  • Track data ingestion, ensure completeness and correctness of metadata (e.g., timestamps, platforms, IDs).
  • Coordinate re-submissions as needed and validate dataset integrity across timepoints.
• Secure Data Access and Visualization Tools:
  • Develop access-controlled dashboards and tools for clinical teams to monitor participant data summaries and analytics.
  • Ensure HIPAA and IRB-compliant practices for data visualization and sharing.
• Follow-Up Data Integration:
  • Integrate 6-month prospective social media data with behavioral assessments, maintaining alignment with baseline timelines.
• Machine Learning Support:
  • Collaborate with graduate students on feature extraction, annotation support, ML-ready dataset preparation, and chatbot model integration.
• Collaborate with Clinical Researchers:
  • Participate in periodic (e.g., weekly) project meetings with the health system clinicians.
  • Help interpret digital trace data in the context of clinical events and contribute to joint development of intervention logic.
• Documentation and Reporting:
  • Maintain clear internal documentation of pipelines, tools, and procedures.
  • Contribute to technical sections of project reports, publications, and compliance documents.
• Mentorship and Training:
  • Provide technical guidance to junior engineering staff and graduate students.
  • Share best practices in data handling, reproducibility, and system maintenance.
• System Uptime and Compliance:
  • Ensure reliability and scalability of computing infrastructure.
  • Oversee updates to virtual machines, encrypted storage, and backup systems to ensure compliance and data security.

Educational Requirements
High school diploma, GED Certificate or Vocational School Diploma

Required Experience
Up to two years of job related experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Masters degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Computational Social Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.
• 2+ years of experience in managing large-scale behavioral, social media, or biomedical data.
• Proficiency in Python, Linux, Nginx, PostgreSQL, SQL, and data workflow management (e.g., Airflow, Docker, Jupyter, Git).
• Familiarity with HIPAA-compliant systems, IRB-regulated research, and privacy-preserving computing.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across disciplines, especially with clinical, behavioral, or social science teams.
• Experience in machine learning frameworks, libraries and tools, including but not limited to traditional learning approaches, large language models and deep learning.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent problem-solving and organizational abilities in complex, data-intensive environments.
• Experience mentoring students or early-career technical staff is a plus.
• Prior work with mental health, social computing, or adolescent behavioral data is advantageous but not required.

Unique Skillsets Required:

This position demands a combination of technical expertise, interdisciplinary fluency, and regulatory awareness. The ideal candidate must possess advanced skills in designing and maintaining scalable data pipelines for high-volume, multimodal social media dataparticularly video, text, and image content from platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. They must also demonstrate fluency in HIPAA- and IRB-compliant data management, including secure ingestion, encryption, de-identification, and metadata tracking.

Crucially, the role requires the ability to collaborate effectively with clinical researchers, translate between computational and healthcare contexts, and ensure data integrity across retrospective and prospective phases of participant engagement. Familiarity with time-aligned behavioral and electronic health record (EHR) data is essential, as is the ability to support downstream machine learning workflows. This combination of social computing acumen, infrastructure engineering, and ethical data stewardship is critical to the success of a project operating at the intersection of AI, adolescent mental health, and digital phenotyping. Appointment Details: This is a full-time, research staff position funded for 12 months with potential for extension.

Pay Information:

FLSA status: Non-Exempt

Hourly Pay Range: $0 - $36.25

SKILLS
This job requires working knowledge in the use of instrumentation and other lab equipment, laboratory processes and procedures specific to assigned lab. Skills in inventory management and the use of specialized computer applications is required.

The University System of Georgia is comprised of our 26 institutions of higher education and learning as well as the System Office. Our USG Statement of Core Values are Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, and Respect. These values serve as the foundation for all that we do as an organization, and each USG community member is responsible for demonstrating and upholding these standards. More details on the USG Statement of Core Values and Code of Conduct are available in USG Board Policy 8.2.18.1.2 and can be found on-line at https://www.usg.edu/policymanual/section8/C224/#p8.2.18_personnel_conduct.

Additionally, USG supports Freedom of Expression as stated in Board Policy 6.5 Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom found on-line at https://www.usg.edu/policymanual/section6/C2653.

The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. The University is committed to maintaining a fair and respectful environment for all. To that end, and in accordance with federal and state law, Board of Regents policy, and University policy, Georgia Tech provides equal opportunity to all faculty, staff, students, and all other members of the Georgia Tech community, including applicants for admission and/or employment, contractors, volunteers, and participants in institutional programs, activities, or services. Georgia Tech complies with all applicable laws and regulations governing equal opportunity in the workplace and in educational activities.

Georgia Tech prohibits discrimination, including discriminatory harassment, on the basis of race, ethnicity, ancestry, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, disability, genetics, or veteran status in its programs, activities, employment, and admissions. This prohibition applies to faculty, staff, students, and all other members of the Georgia Tech community, including affiliates, invitees, and guests. Further, Georgia Tech prohibits citizenship status, immigration status, and national origin discrimination in hiring, firing, and recruitment, except where such restrictions are required in order to comply with law, regulation, executive order, or Attorney General directive, or where they are required by Federal, State, or local government contract.

Background Check

Successful candidate must be able to pass a background check. Please visit http://policylibrary.gatech.edu/employment/pre-employment-screening

This is not a supervisory position.
This position does not have any financial responsibilities.
This position will not be required to drive.
This role is not considered a position of trust.
This position does not require a purchasing card (P-Card).
This position will not travel
This position does not require security clearance.