iOS Developer Embedded at a UCLA Autism Lab

Six Months, Full Time

3% of children are autistic. 30% of them at age 9 remain minimally verbal: a handful of single words, never put together into a sentence.

Does that evoke something in you beyond the number? A personal connection, or some other experience that lets you feel the texture of the problem?

If so, read on.

The Kasari Lab at UCLA, one of the top autism research groups in the world, has developed a play-based intervention that helps minimally verbal autistic children. Over 24 weeks, many make real gains in communication and social connection.

The intervention involves a combination of assistive tech setup and play improvisation that makes it challenging to deliver. It is not standard practice.

You would be making Visual Play, a delightful app that takes pieces of this intervention, and others, and makes them easier for regular clinicians to do. Embedded in the lab from Day 1, paired with an implementation lead who spends their weeks with clinicians, you would create something a clinician could use while playing with a child.

There's nothing harder than child's play. Our job is to make it easier.

Visual Play is funded by an NIH SBIR award to SKIES, a small Pasadena company started by Caltech alums that makes Visual Choices, one of the most-used communication apps for early communicators. This is a six-month Phase I. If the prototype works, Phase II follows, and so does the product. The goal is to improve autism intervention in Los Angeles, and beyond.

An ideal candidate:

• is comfortable being close to, and taking feedback from, researchers and clinicians;
• has shipped real native iOS apps;
• uses AI as a force multiplier, but understands the code it produces and is not dependent on it;
• builds large and complex, yet maintainable, systems;
• is resourceful, motivated, and tenacious;
• is a calm, respectful presence in a research lab.

Full time, six months, $65,000 ($130,000 annualized). In person at UCLA. Starting as soon as we find the right person. Interested? Contact [email protected].