Computer engineer position in the INRIA team PETRUS

Responsible of the development of personal data management (android) applications

About INRIA: Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics, promotes “scientific excellence for technology transfer and society”. Graduates from the world’s top universities, Inria’s 2,700 employees rise to the challenges of digital sciences. With its open, agile model, Inria is able to explore original approaches with its partners in industry and academia and provide an efficient response to the multidisciplinary and application challenges of the digital transformation. Inria is the source of many innovations that add value and create jobs.

About PETRUS team: We are witnessing an exponential accumulation of personal data on central servers: data automatically gathered by administrations and companies but also data produced by individuals themselves (e.g., photos, agendas, data produced by smart appliances and quantified-self devices) and deliberately stored in the cloud for convenience. The net effect is, on the one hand, an unprecedented threat on data privacy due to abusive usage and attacks and, on the other hand, difficulties in providing powerful user-centric services (e.g. personal big data) which require crossing data stored today in isolated silos. The Personal Cloud paradigm holds the promise of a Privacy-by-Design storage and computing platform, where each individual can gather her complete digital environment in one place and share it with applications and users, while preserving her control. However, this paradigm leaves the privacy and security issues in user’s hands, which leads to a paradox if we consider the weaknesses of individuals’ autonomy in terms of computer security, ability and willingness to administer sharing policies. The challenge is however paramount in a society where emerging economic models are all based – directly or indirectly – on exploiting personal data. PETRUS team is conducting research on decentralized secure Personal Clouds and is currently maturing the potential creation of a startup exploiting previous results from the team, namely PlugDB. The position is offered in the context of this maturing phase and thus could lead to a permanent contract once the startup is created.

About PlugDB: The PlugDB engine is an embedded database server capable of storing huge quantity of data (currently tuples and documents) in tables and BLOBs, indexing them, querying them in SQL, sharing them in a selective way and protecting them against piracy. PlugDB engine can run with very few resources on a microcontroller and thus be embedded in secure devices (see https://project.inria.fr/plugdb/en/).

Position description: In collaboration with the team members (including another engineer, in the team since 3 years), the applicant will be responsible for the development of android applications strongly interacting with PlugDB (considering PlugDB constraints, design and implementation of the DB schema, indexation, tuning). These applications will allow individuals to:

  • Retrieve personal data from the Internet, from their smartphone, tablets, computers
  • Store this personal data securely, protecting it from loss and piracy, thanks to PlugDB software
  • Access their data in mobility, even without internet connection
  • Find easily a given document/data
  • Share easily his personal data with selected relatives
  • Obtain relevant statistics and dashboards computed on his data

Required skills:

  • Databases, SQL, JDBC/ODBC, C/C++, Android development, Git/SVN tools, Python, (QT)
  • English or French fluent

 Benefits:

  • Nice workplace (http://www.sciences.uvsq.fr/), with view on Versailles castle, restaurant on site, 30mn from Paris city center
  • Possibility of French classes and further training related to software development
  • Scientific Resident card and help for visa
  • Possible participation in national and international events (demonstrations)
  • Small and international team (5 permanent members, 2 engineers, 3 PhD students and 3 master students).
  • Inria reputation

 

Contact: petrus-recrutement@inria.fr

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