u/caprine_chris

I’ll preface this by saying I’m familiar with the different Antarctic programs and have skimmed their job boards, but I didn’t find what I’m looking for, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask the community here:

Has anyone here worked in Antarctica in a software engineering, data engineering, infrastructure, or other technical role?

I’m a software engineer and I’m interested in spending a season working in Antarctica.

I’m curious about:
- What SWE/IT/data roles actually exist at the stations
- Which contractors or programs hire software/technical workers
- Typical compensation and deployment bonuses
- Whether $200k+ is realistic for senior technical roles
- What qualifications or prior experience are generally required

I’m less interested in scientific research positions and more interested in software engineering, data engineering, cloud/infrastructure, DevOps, systems, or technical leadership.

If anyone has firsthand experience or knows of specific employers/roles, I’d appreciate the details.

How can I set up Neovim so that its runtime dependencies are fully isolated from my system, similar to how Visual Studio Code manages extensions?

Right now, I’m noticing that Neovim providers and plugin tooling rely on whatever global runtimes are on my machine:

* the Python provider uses the system python3 unless I override it,

* Node-based plugins use the global node/npm,

* lazy.nvim bootstraps hererocks using the system Python,

* :checkhealth passes or fails depending on what is installed globally.

I do not want to:

* pin my system Python/Node versions just for editor tooling,

* install packages like pynvim or neovim into global runtimes,

* depend on hidden runtime state outside my Neovim config.

What I do want is:

* a dedicated Python virtual environment for Neovim providers,

* a dedicated Node runtime / package environment for Node-based plugins,

* explicit provider paths configured in Neovim,

* :checkhealth to pass based only on Neovim-managed environments.

Basically, I want Neovim to be as self-contained and reproducible as Visual Studio Code, without polluting or depending on my global runtimes.

What is the cleanest way to achieve this? Are people using tools like mise, asdf, direnv, dedicated provider venvs, containerized runtimes, or something else?

Update: I managed to get it working nicely using mise