Ask HN: How to get freelance work in academic projects?

Go to the labs that you are interested in, try to fill in the gaps that they cant handle, charge cheap.

Hi AndriusSutas,

I actually can't help you but I am curious. What kind of academic projects are you looking for? Do you have an specific topic you want to tackle?

Nothing specific. Anything that has mechanical design, electronics or software development. I think research topics should be left to the academics themselves. I am interested in supporting infrastructure / software / hardware.

Most universities should have some kind of job openings website. I used to work at one and that's where everything was posted. But keep in mind that a lot of universities that aren't well funded will want to pay their own students to do the work, even if they're not as skilled.

I've done freelance work in academic projects after working several years as an employee in a university department and a research institute.

As mentioned in another response, universities will prefer to have the work done by students, simply because either they can get them for free, or the process for hiring them is much simpler than hiring an outsider. Research grants often allow for student research assistants but have no budget for external contractors, and if the grant proposal includes that it'll be naturally scrutinized for accountability as the granting institution tries to avoid having funds funnelled to someone's buddy/relative/etc.

What happens in my case is that a project gets seriously delayed because some crucial part needed to complete it was either not planned in the proposal, or the project partner responsible for it failed to deliver. Then someone in the project knows me because we had worked together previously, and recommends me. In some cases where they did have enough budget left I finished that part, the project was reviewed successfully, and everyone was happy. However that's quite intense work, not just the technical part on a tight deadline, but some project partners might be less than optimally collaborative for a variety of reasons.

Academic projects involve quite an amount of politics even if you only care about getting your part to work correctly: you'll need to get some information about the other components and that often conflicts with other partner's interests which are only tenuously connected to the project's technical/scientific success beyond the final review. I wouldn't have known how to deal with it if I hadn't worked for years in different projects as an employee and saw how things play out.

Therefore, from my experience I think your options would be to work in research for a while to make contacts, or contribute to open source research software. In any case your chances of getting market rates for your work are slim.

In spite of all the above, I've had nice experiences doing that kind of work; don't let my comments above discourage you, just keep those issues in mind.