The Coq mailing list

[Adam Chlipala <adamc AT csail.mit.edu>]

Hi everyone,

I'm writing to start conversations with people who might be interested 
in working full-time on improving the Coq implementation.  So far, such 
positions have mostly been in France. It seems likely, however, that one 
will be opening up at MIT, my institution in the Boston (USA) area.

The location wouldn't be the only difference.  We expect that the pay 
scale would be significantly above that for American graduate-student 
research assistants (or Inria researchers, for that matter).

Administrative details are still being finalized, but we expect that an 
engineer in this position would have some official Inria affiliation and 
some official MIT affiliation.  Some time would be spent in Paris, 
getting up to speed with the workings of the Coq project, but most time 
would be at MIT.

The basic purpose of this position is to create a stronger bridge 
between the Coq development team and the growing user base of Coq in the 
USA.  The engineer would be expected to spend time working closely with 
users to understand the best improvements to make to Coq.  Those users 
would be in academia (naturally leaning toward work in my group and 
elsewhere at MIT, but also including other institutions) and industry.  
In fact, it is likely that some funding for the position will come from 
companies that are using Coq and wish to have some help from experts in 
auditing their Coq code.

We expect that the specifics of the position will be settled in the next 
few weeks.  In the mean time, I'd like to start discussing with any 
candidates for the position.  Might that be you?  The effective 
requirements would be:
1) Should probably be an expert user of Coq, but prior experience with 
the Coq implementation is not required.  We'll be looking for a strong 
record contributing to large code bases in OCaml or similar languages.
2) Interest in spending a substantial amount of time based out of the 
USA.  If everything goes well, this could become a de facto permanent 
position, so Europeans looking to return to Europe in a few years will 
definitely be considered, though somehow the position may be more 
appealing to both sides for someone who is happy to be in the USA long-term.
3) Almost certainly a strong candidate would have a PhD with a related 
thesis, but I won't give that as a hard requirement.

I think this is an exciting time for Coq, as it moves from research 
prototype to essential real-world infrastructure, and we see this 
engineer position as sitting at the center of that phenomenon!

Please let me know by reply e-mail if you're (tentatively) interested in 
a position like this, which would probably start in late 2015 or early 2016.