Home Healthcare Optimisation Engineer – KTP Associate

The University of Edinburgh and Oran Homecare Ltd. have been awarded a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) funded by Innovate UK to develop and implement a robust, flexible, and scalable routing and scheduling tool for optimising home health care services. The goal is to replace the highly manual, constraint heavy scheduling processes with a configurable in-house system capable of supporting diverse planning restrictions and goals within Oran Homecare Ltd. as well as across the sector. This is an innovation project which will draw on the knowledge and expertise of the KTP Associate working together with Dr Jörg Kalcsics in the School of Mathematics and Dr James Richings in the EPCC at the University of Edinburgh.

Oran Homecare Ltd. is an award-winning provider of Care at Home, Hospital Discharge and Assisted Living services throughout Scotland. Their mission is to raise the standards of care throughout the UK. Oran has a track record of innovating in partnership with other bodies throughout the social care sector and is currently developing state of the art scheduling software in partnership with the University of Edinburgh to improve coordination throughout the sector.

We are seeking an independent and motivated KTP Associate with a track record in mathematical modelling and the design of optimisation algorithms in applied research or in industry, ideally with a focus on home healthcare, transport logistics, or last-mile delivery problems, expertise in data analysis and engineering, and proficiency in C/C++. Experience in high-performance computing and cross-disciplinary collaboration is desirable.

Over 24 months, you will further develop a heuristic-based optimisation tool for scheduling and routing home healthcare workers to support Oran Homecare's daily operations. Your work will span five stages covering successive aspects of the development: (1) learning the trade of home healthcare planning processes and tools; (2) developing automated data ingestion pipelines and data cleaning, validation, and testing methods; (3) modularising the existing prototype optimisation tool; (4) extending the tool by new planning restrictions and goals, devising trade-off mechanisms for conflicting goals, and applying state-of-the-art concepts from high-performance computing to improve efficiency; (5) creating demo case studies and training material. You will have ability to adapt the schedule within the bounds of the project and you will collaborate closely with the Oran Homecare Ltd. team.

The detailed work plan for the project is available upon request from Dr Jörg Kalcsics (joerg.kalcsics@ed.ac.uk).

As part of this role, you may have the opportunity to publish research in top-tier journals, contribute to developing production-grade optimisation tools, and gain significant commercial exposure in the ever-growing home healthcare sector.

Full-time: 35 hours per week

Fixed term: 24 months

Whilst you will be employed by UoE, the details of your terms and conditions will be discussed further at interview and are subject to Oran Homecare's terms and conditions, including any salary increases.

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• Comprehensive Staff Benefits, including generous annual leave entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, a wide range of staff discounts, family-friendly initiatives, and flexible work options. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page (opens in a new tab) and use our reward calculator to discover the value of your pay and benefits.

The closing date for applications is 30 November 2026.

Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm UK time. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.

Interviews will take place at Oran Homecare's offices in Kirkcaldy, and the interview panel will comprise both academic and company representatives.

Interviews will be held on 14 and 15 December 2026.

The School of Mathematics

The University of Edinburgh's School of Mathematics is one of the world's leading mathematical sciences departments, home to world-class researchers and to an innovative educational environment for both undergraduates and postgraduates. We are proud to have a highly international faculty and students from around the world. As a School we value both the breadth and depth of our research and teaching.

We have around 110 permanent faculty and around 45 research fellows and research associates, who cover a broad range of research topics in pure and applied mathematics, operational research and statistics. The School has an enviable record of attracting prestigious fellowships and currently hosts, for instance, 6 ERC grant holders and 7 Royal Society University Research and Dorothy Hodgkin Fellows. In the 2023 Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects we are ranked 18th among the world's best Mathematics departments. Together with the Departments of Mathematics and Actuarial Mathematics & Statistics at Heriot-Watt University, we form the Maxwell Institute; our joint submission to REF2021was ranked 3rd in the UK for Mathematical Sciences by research power, based on the quality and breadth of our combined research.

The School delivers a world-leading educational experience for its students and is constantly exploring new evidence-based ideas in mathematical education in order to provide a stimulating learning environment. There are excellent possibilities for imaginative curriculum development, including online activities, and course design and delivery. The School teaches pure and applied Mathematics, operational research and statistics. We have approximately 1000 undergraduate students, around 210 MSc students, and our Graduate School has close to 160 PhD students.

Edinburgh is home to the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, one of the UK's two major conference centres in the mathematical sciences and operated jointly by the University with Heriot-Watt University. Over the past 30 years the centre has established a superb reputation for hosting workshops at the highest scientific level on all mathematical topics, attracting many of the best mathematicians in the world to the UK.

The School is located in the James Clerk Maxwell Building which is situated on the King's Buildings campus, approximately 3 kilometres south of the city centre.

Further information about the School, our research and our teaching is available on the School of Mathematics Website (https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk) (Opens in new browser tab)