Research Technologist II (OSG/XSEDE Architect - Remote Eligible)

About PACE:
Located in the heart of vibrant Atlanta, Georgia, the Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) team defines and manages centralized research computing services at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We facilitate research efforts and foster strategic partnerships to provide Georgia Tech researchers with an unrivaled advantage, empowering them to lead their disciplines for the advancement of science and society across the globe. In addition to high-performance computing, we incorporate emerging cloud, network, data analytics, and storage technologies. Our growing team directly supports faculty, students, and other researchers resulting in a dynamic environment filled with intellectual stimulation and continuous innovation.

About the position:
In response to specific awarded NSF grants supporting significant OSG and XSEDE resources, as well as PACE’s role in facilitation, the OSG/XSEDE Architect position was created with the support of GT leadership. Salary for this position is NOT contingent on securing further awards.

Job Summary:

Significant evolution is occurring in the way Research Computing is done at regional, national, and global levels. While conventional High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters play an important role in advancing science, these localized systems can fall short in facilitating projects that require shared and flexible access to powerful research cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources across the nation or globe. The Open Science Grid (OSG) and Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) are two leading multi-institutional national-scale National Science Foundation (NSF) cyberinfrastructure projects to centralize and democratize research computing resources and knowledge across the whole nation. Georgia Tech researchers have key roles in related funded projects, including but not limited to LIGO, IceCube, CTA, and VERITAS. 

The PACE team is seeking an “OSG/XSEDE Architect” to work as a bridge between these organizations and PACE, playing a key role in integration of local Georgia Tech resources into these national computational grids, and defining, implementing, and supporting PACE’s portion. As our faculty and student researcher needs continue to evolve, the architect provides guidance and expertise to incorporate the capabilities of OSG, XSEDE, and similar consortia environments into PACE’s available service offerings. The architect also consults directly with research scientists, students, and faculty to help them effectively and efficiently utilize all the resources PACE, OSG, and XSEDE collectively have available. 

In collaboration with other PACE Architects (e.g., with Cloud Computing, Distributed Shared Storage, and Scheduler/Workflow Orchestration expertise) and Georgia Tech research teams, they will design, build, integrate, and maintain cyberinfrastructure and scientific workflows, which in turn facilitate multi-faceted computational and data requirements from a wide variety of scientific domains, and assure secure end-to-end solutions and method reproducibility.

 
The OSG/XSEDE Architect (Research Technologist II) is a professional research faculty position which requires the incumbent to possess or develop a series of specialized expertise and technical skills including HPC and HTC scheduler technologies, UNIX/Linux Operating system, scripting languages, software containers, configuration management tools, scientific computation, science hubs and gateways, and data transfer technologies. The incumbent will be expected to follow existing best practices, as well as suggesting new approaches to improve existing practices.

Skills:

- Experience implementing large-scale shared research cyberinfrastructure such as resources available within XSEDE and/or Open Science Grid (OSG)
- Experience implementing and managing distributed shared storage technologies
- Experience with managing and scheduling cloud and container services (e.g. HTCondor, Slurm, Kubernetes, Slate, Docker, Singularity)
- Experience with mainstream configuration management tools (e.g. SaltStack)
- Experience working with researchers translating needs into computational tasks
- Excellent written and verbal communications skills
- Minimum 3 years of relevant work experience
- Ability to work in a team environment 
- Ability to interact and collaborate with faculty, researchers, graduate students, IT professionals, and vendors 
- Ability to oversee complex and recurring cycles of design, evaluation, deployment, and troubleshooting of technical solutions
- Excellent troubleshooting and methodical experimentation skills
- Good command of UNIX/Linux and mainstream scripting languages
- Good command of RedHat Enterprise Linux system

Education:

- Preferred education is a PhD in Computer Science or related field.

- A Master’s degree and three (3) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of that degree, or

- A Master’s degree and five (5) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of a Bachelor’s degree, or 

- A Doctoral degree

Contact Information:

For additional information about this position, please contact Ruben Lara at ruben.lara@oit.gatech.edu.

Other Information:

Must be a U.S. Citizen or permanent resident