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Location

Chapel Hill, NC | United States

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Job description

Vacancy ID: NF0007760

Position Summary/Description:

This position may be eligible for a hybrid work arrangement that may include a partially remote work location, consistent with System Office policy. UNC Chapel Hill employees are generally required to reside within a reasonable commuting distance of their assigned duty station. 

This full stack developer position's primary roles and responsibilities are to create digital assets in support of; 1) street drug analysis lab ( , and 2) scientific research on intervening in social media to counter misinformation.

We are rooted in harm reduction principles and have an open source ethos. We strive do work that is meaningful and has direct social benefit. Accordingly, our work environment is fast-paced outward facing, and nimble to adapt to emerging public health concerns. This position will be expected to provide professional grade software development services to internal team member projects, as well as public facing data dashboards.

Street Drug Analysis Lab ( UNC IPRC )
This position will work closely a team of health professional to develop software for implementing a mail-in drug checking program. Drug checking is the use of chemistry lab analysis to understand what is in street drugs. We provide that information back to communities in a way that allows for better health decisions. We have pioneered a mail-in drug checking program whereby public health programs can send us drug samples for testing from around the country (program website With 70 sites in 20+ states, we have a unique real-time window into the drug supply, and are looking for a someone to help us with a data input and processing pipeline, including the development of public facing data dashboards.

Health Communication on Social Media (Hussman School of Journalism and Media)
Social media can be used to promote positive health behaviors. However, there are also widespread concerns about health misinformation in social media. We are conducting advanced experiments to address both – promote health and counter misinformation. The central tool is a hyper-realistic social media environment that can be used for research so every person has the same experience each day. The base (open source) system ( is built on JavaScript and MongoDB. We use this tool to conduct randomized experiments (akin to A/B split testing) that modify platform features for message exposure and to encourage interactions in social media. We also analyze social media data for patterns of health misinformation. In particular, we focus on cancer misinformation.

Education and Experience:

* Masters in computer science
* Experience with R and/or Python (Plotly, Altair, Seaborn) data visualization tools
* Experience with processing data from wearables and/or geolocated mobile devices
* Experience with project management software (Basecamp, Asana, etc.)
* Experience creating APIs and providing documentation 
* Experience with data lake management (Snowflake, etc.)
* Experience using generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, GitHub Co-Pilot) to write code
* Experience developing machine learning classifiers and other tools (preferably neural networks)
* Experience with scientific data visualization tools (Streamlit, Deepnote, Tableau, etc.)
* Experience analyzing social media data (e.g., Twitter, TikTok, Instagram)
* Experience with CRM to maintain websites (e.g., WordPress, Squarespace)
* Experience with Qualtrics for questionnaire deployment
* Experience using Mechanical Turk or other crowdsourced task platforms
* Management of large data files, including streaming video from social media
* Familiarity with analysis of misinformation in social media
* Familiarity with principles of drug harm reduction and/or public health

About The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Carolina rates among the nation’s great institutions of higher education, set on an historic and beautiful campus that celebrates all four seasons. Carolina’s students, faculty and staff come here from around the world, bringing varied cultural, racial and ethnic heritages that help make UNC-Chapel Hill a thriving intellectual center. We’re repeatedly ranked the nation’s best value in higher education for students seeking to earn a college degree – the University has garnered the top spot each time since the ranking’s launch in 1998.Whether you’ve just started your career, are new to academia or are a seasoned professional with assorted campus experiences to draw on, we hope you will find a great place at Carolina.

Connections working at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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