Senior System Administrator (Research Fellow)

Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a full-time specific purpose position as Senior System Administrator (Research Fellow) at the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC), University of Galway. The position is available immediately, with flexibility to work from our Dublin or Galway offices coupled with the option of a hybrid work from home arrangement.

 Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)

ICHEC is Ireland’s national centre for High-Performance Computing (HPC) providing digital infrastructure capabilities and expertise through R&D engagements and skills development programmes to academia, industry and public sector organisations.

With a highly ambitious leading-edge Strategy for 2021-2025, ICHEC provides infrastructure services and expertise in HPC and data intelligence to develop efficient platforms, solutions and services based on technologies including AI, high performance data analytics, Earth Observation, quantum computing and cybersecurity across several sectors including environmental sciences, healthcare, agriculture, energy, financial services and ICT.

ICHEC works in close partnership with a number of national and international researchers, enterprises and public authorities for joint R&D, skills development, and provisioning HPC and data services to accelerate their digital transformation and green transition.

For more details reach out to our Centre Infrastructure Manager, Niall Wilson or visit www.ichec.ie.

Job Description:

The successful candidate will take a lead role in the operation and technical support of ICHEC HPC infrastructure and associated services for the purpose of enabling the National HPC Service. This position is a highly specialist technical role. Its primary purpose is to ensure the successful operation of the High Performance Computing (HPC) base infrastructure services at ICHEC. This involves the management of virtual infrastructure, physical servers, HPC and large storage systems, spread across multiple datacentres. ICHEC’s national HPC service, currently supporting in excess of 600 researchers annually across all Irish HEIs, depends on the continuous availability and optimal performance of this infrastructure. The role will involve working in close collaboration with the broader ICHEC team as well as with national and international academic, industry and public sector partners.

Selected responsibilities and duties for this post include, and are not limited to

1. Diagnosing and resolving faults on HPC and associated systems
   • Interact with users and computational scientists in diagnosing and resolving problems with applications
   • Understand the complex software and hardware stack comprising HPC clusters in order to troubleshoot and fix underlying faults or performance issues
   • Work with supplier technical support when required to resolve issues
2. Operation of HPC and associated systems
   • Automation of lifecycle management of user account and projects
   • Installation and configuration of software along with security and bugfix updates
   • Configuration of batch scheduling and accounting systems
   • Development of comprehensive system monitoring and alerting
3. Commissioning of new platforms and services
   • Contribute to technical specification and tender evaluation of new HPC and other infrastructure platforms
   • Plan and implement the various stages of new platforms and services from commissioning and testing through to migration to production status

This is a role for a highly motivated problem-solver, with a creative and analytical mind to build new HPC platforms, services and solutions that will have a global impact.

Qualifications/Skills required:

Essential Requirements:

• Applicants must have a higher degree (Level 8) in computational science/computer science, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience (min. 10+ years) in a similar technical environment.
• Advanced Linux systems administration skills with at least 3 years practical experience.
• Good knowledge and experience in managing fault tolerant, clustered services and cluster management software.
• Good knowledge of local area networking including Layer 2 switch and VLAN configuration and network services such as DNS and Apache and Nginx web servers.
• Good knowledge of security principles and practices including deploying firewalls, configuring SELinux and experience using security monitoring and intrusion detection tools.
• Experience deploying configuration management (eg Ansible, Saltstack) and monitoring tools (Nagios, Icinga).
• Systematic approach to trouble shooting and problem solving.

Desirable Requirements:

• Experience managing HPC specific parallel filesystems such as Lustre
• Knowledge and experience managing private cloud technology such as OpenStack
• Knowledge of federated identity and authentication management systems
• Knowledge of software defined storage clusters (eg CEPH)

Salary: Research Fellow Scale point 1 to point 8 (€60,412 - €78,865) per annum pro rata for shorter and/or part-time contracts. Appointment on this range will be dependent on qualification and experience.

Start date: Position is available immediately.

Further information on research and working at University of Galway is available on Research at NUI Galway Researchers at University of Galway are encouraged to avail of a range of training and development opportunities designed to support their personal career development plans. University of Galway provides continuing professional development supports for all researchers seeking to build their own career pathways either within or beyond academia.  Researchers are encouraged to engage with our Researcher Development Centre (RDC) upon commencing employment - see www.nuigalway.ie/rdc for further information.

For information on moving to Ireland please see www.euraxess.ie

Further information about ICHEC is available at www.ichec.ie

Informal enquiries concerning the post may be made to recruit@ichec.ie

To Apply:

Applications to include a 1-page motivation letter, CV (max. 3 pages), and the contact details of three referees should be sent, via e-mail (in a single PDF only) to recruit@ichec.ie

Please put reference number University of Galway 065-23 in subject line of e-mail application.

Closing date for receipt of applications is 30th March 2023

All positions are recruited in line with Open, Transparent, Merit (OTM) and Competency based recruitment. University of Galway is an equal opportunities employer.

University of Galway reserve the right to re-advertise or extend the closing date for this post.