Computer engineer (staff position), closing date: 8th March 2012
Job Reference: IT-DSS-FDO-2012-14-LD
Introduction:
The Information Technology (IT) Department provides computing services for all aspects of the laboratory’s activities. These require a wide range of technologies and skills including the provision of computing facilities, local and wide area networking, platforms for computing environments, software development, databases, desktop environments and a wide range of system integration and management tasks. The Department collaborates with institutes around the world as part of the LHC Computing Grid to provide the environments for physics data processing as well as engaging in research and development projects with industry as part of the CERN openlab and partnering in a number of European Commission projects. More information on the Department can be found here.
The CERN Data and Storage Services Group (DSS) ensures a coherent development strategy for CERN physics data management components, driven by operational and user needs. A key responsibility of the Group is the operation of the multi petabyte-scale grid-enabled storage solutions for the high-energy physics community. The selected candidate will join the File systems and Data Operations (FDO) section in charge of operating and support of the storage and file system services for physics for CERN and the Worldwide LHC computing Grid (WLCG) community. The section is currently managing more than 1’600 servers with more than 30’000 disks, representing more than 60 petabyte of raw storage.
Functions
As a member of the Data Storage and Services group, the successful candidate will:
Operate, install, maintain and support the software components for the CASTOR and EOS services.
Review, design, constantly improve operational procedures for the services above in particular the area of reducing the deployment effort. Monitoring, automated storage reorganization after hardware changes or media failures and tunable media redundancy will be among the key areas for this activity.
Discuss and support the LHC experiment users and the LCG partner sites deploying data management software developed by the group.
Participate in DSS Group’s activity to continuously evaluate and integrate new data management technologies (such as scalable file systems) and new access protocols (S3, NFS4).
Document system components, best practices for deployment and the analysis of deployment problems together with other members of the EOS and CASTOR deployment teams and the user community.
Qualification required:
University degree or equivalent in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics or a closely related field.
Experience and competencies
The experience required for this post is:
At least three years of experience and an excellent understanding of large-scale data storage and file system services, more specifically in the following fields.
Linux operating system administration.
RedHat Enterprise Linux in particular; UNIX shell script; Perl or Python programming; Linux cluster management, automation and monitoring tools.
The technical competencies required for this post are:
Programming/Software development: databases and SQL, Kerberos based authentication.
Experimental data reduction and triggering: understanding of the data production and analysis chains of high energy physics experiments.
Installation and integration (Systems integration, Porting/software integration, Systems installation/decommissioning, Technical Advice and Guidance).
Service transition (Configuration management, Change management, Release management).
Service & systems operation (System software administration, Security administration, IT Operations, Database administration, Problem management, Service desk and incident management).
Database/Repository design: large disk storage systems, tape systems and/or global file systems; knowledge of disk and tape hardware and technology, Ethernet, external storage networking.
The behavioural competencies required for this post are:
Demonstrating Flexibility.
Solving problem: identifying and analyzing the key issues in complex situations.
Learning and sharing knowledge: keeping up-to-date with developments in own field of expertise and readily absorbing new information.
Communicating effectively: ability to express and explain ideas in a convincing manner.
Achieving results: delivering prompt and efficient service taking into account customer needs.
Working in teams: understanding when teamwork is required and when to work independently to achieve the best results.
The language competencies required for this post are:
Spoken and written English or French: ability to draw-up technical specifications or scientific reports and to make oral presentations in one of the two languages; as well as the ability to understand and speak the other language in professional contexts.
Eligibility and closing date:
Employing a diverse and international workforce is a CERN core value and central to our success. We welcome applications from all Member States irrespective of gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or personal situation. This vacancy will be filled as soon as possible, and applications should normally reach us no later than 8 March 2012. By applying here, you allow CERN to consider your application for any position it considers relevant with respect to your profile. Please ensure you update your profile regularly with any relevant information and that you inform the Recruitment Service if you wish your file to be removed from the database.
Note on Employment Conditions:
We offer a limited-duration contract for a period of five years. Limited-duration contracts shall terminate by default on their date of expiry. Subject to certain conditions, holders of limited-duration contracts may be granted an indefinite contract.
These functions require shift work and the participation in a regular stand-by duty, including nights, Sundays and public holidays.
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