New Job at Kitware
In January I started looking for a job as my postdoctoral position at the University of Pittsburgh was due to end in September. I took a break from this to attend Camp KDE, the first KDE meeting held west of the Atlantic. I gave two halves of two talks (so a whole talk in total) where I talked about two things I work on in the open source world - scientific visualization and packaging.
Bill Hoffman also attended the meeting and gave a talk about CMake. While watching his talk (and I think the same happened while he was watching my talks) it clicked that Kitware would be a great fit. Once I got back to Pittsburgh I sent off a copy of my CV, and they very quickly set up some phone interviews. After that they flew me out to Clifton Park for quite an interview, if you get me over a few beers I might tell you all about it...
The more I learned about Kitware the more I liked it. Their language of choice is C++, they do a lot of scientific visualization, such as ParaView, work with national labs, academics and companies on interesting scientific problems. Then there are the software process, cross platform build, test and packaging projects. They even use Qt, and will likely use it more now the license has changed. Most of their software is released under an open source license too! I really got on with Bill and his family when I met them at Camp KDE, and came away with a very good impression of Kitware after the interview.
I accepted a job offer for the position of research and development engineer at Kitware in Clifton Park, NY. Due to being British, and various visa issues I will not be starting there until October (assuming all the visa paperwork falls into place). My wife and I are very excited about this opportunity at Kitware. So wish me luck, I am leaving academia after quite a long stay. Don't tell anyone at Kitware, but most of the stuff they want me to do I would gladly do in my spare time 
They are still looking for more developers, especially people with C++ and Qt experience if you are on the job market too.
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Benoit Jacob on :
I wouldn't mind my own stay in Academia to end in a similar way -- but I've got one more year of postdoc ahead.
Ian Monroe on :
Alex on :
I was there for a half a year, Kitware really rocks, cool company, free software, nice people
And the nature around Clifton Park is really nice too, the Adirondacks are close, and it's also easy to get to Boston and NYC
We had an apartment at Mohawk Terrace, with view over the Mohawk river from our balcony, squirrels in the trees, hmm
Alex
Btw. what visa will your wife get ? An H4 is not enough for working.
Marcus D. Hanwell on :
My wife will get the H4 visa, she has been on a J2 so far and has worked. You spoilt a future blog post - she is expecting our first baby, and so not working for a few of years at least is not a real problem.
James D. on :
Congratulations! And good luck!
P.S.: Do you still see a bright future for Avogadro (which just rocks since a couple of releases)?
Marcus D. Hanwell on :
James D. on :
BTW, I wonder if Avogadro can handle (or make use of) the FASTA? format. Actually I'm just interested in DNA/RNA sequences. It would be interesting to see the double stranded (obviously helical) DNA from a single sequence (input from FASTA file) or an alignment between two sequences (or even DNA/RNA hybrids). This would be a really neat tool for teaching. Right now I use textbook drawing to tell students how we think DNA may look like in solution, or how hydrogen bonds do their job. Thinking one step further one could for example import the structure of a Taq polymerase (1CMW.pdb) and compare it to the size of the DNA. Methinks this would give a better understanding of the matter.
Regards
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTA
Mauricio Piacentini on :
Simon Bettison on :