The actual way it's done is that people ask questions the MathOverflow crowd is likely to have answers to, the MathOverflow crowd posts them, and then the thread gets locked for being off-topic. Seems to work pretty well.
Thanks for the suggestion. Like most of these smallish research labs, it looks like they only hire post-docs for 1 to 2 year contracts and/or Ph.D. students. I'm specifically trying to find full-time positions (had several friends get a little screwed over with visa issues when trying to work in Europe at temporary contract positions).
Thanks for the link, though. I will definitely look carefully at their open positions.
I am a graduate student in the U.S. nearing the completion of my master's degree in applied mathematics. I am looking for jobs at the master's degree level that involve working on large data sets, doing machine learning, scientific computing, etc. I don't want to be a software developer per se, but I don't mind doing software development among other scientific tasks.
For comparison, I used to work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory as an assistant radar analyst. It was a very very good mix of theoretical work, algorithmic development, and plain software development. I'm looking for similar institutions in Europe that are looking to hire full-time employees at the master's degree level. I've considered CERN (and may still apply there) but it appears to be either too much purely experimental physics or plain software development for me.
How do I locate these kinds of institutions, and what processes should I undertake to find such a job in Europe? What kinds of things should I look for in terms of job security, visa issues (I am only a US citizen), etc? I have worked for an extended time in Paris once before and loved living there (it was as a visiting research assistant as part of my current grad program). I'm looking to replicate that experience but in a full-time, non-student position.
Note: I've already done the standard many hours of Googling to find obvious job search web pages and this has proved extremely unsuccessful. My university career services office also said they do not support overseas job searching beyond whatever is listed in their web recruiting interface. All of the jobs that are overseas in that interface are banking-related, which is a field I want to avoid.