Research Technologist II (Cloud Architect - Remote Eligible)

Job Summary:

The Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) program is designed to efficiently and cost-effectively provide significant shared research cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources and consultative services that empower the Georgia Tech research community – students, faculty, and staff – to lead their disciplines for the advancement of science, engineering, and society.

This Research Technologist II position serves in the critical role of the PACE Cloud Architect. The Cloud Architect provides consultation and collaboration with GT research groups, assisting them in the use of a wide variety of cloud technologies. Their focus is to leverage computational, data storage, and network resources within both local and commercial cloud resources to complement and enhance PACE services supporting GT’s research and instructional enterprise. They also work closely with other IT groups (both central and unit) to avoid service duplication.

Significant evolution is occurring in the way Research Computing is done at regional, national, and global levels. While conventional High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters like those maintained by PACE 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 CI resources across the nation or globe. The mission of PACE to facilitate cutting edge research therefore extends beyond the traditional local resources and services.

Commercial cloud offerings offer unique research CI capabilities, distinct from what would be possible to implement locally. But these sophisticated platforms require significant and specialized skill development to use effectively. The PACE Cloud Architect is the essential bridge for constructing a hybrid services model that leverages the strengths of local research CI resources along with those available via commercial cloud vendors or consortia such as OSG and XSEDE. They provide expert level design, support, and troubleshooting for PACE services that use private and public cloud resources.

The Cloud Architect works with other PACE architects (e.g., with Computational Grid, Distributed Shared Storage, and Scheduler/Workflow Orchestration expertise) and PACE consultants in collaboration with GT domain researchers to design, build, integrate, and maintain cyberinfrastructure, codes, and scientific workflows, providing a research platform that is more powerful than the sum of its parts. These collaborations facilitate multi-faceted computational and data requirements from a wide variety of scientific and engineering domains, and assure secure end-to-end solutions and method reproducibility.

The Cloud Architect (Research Technologist II) is a professional research faculty position which requires the incumbent to possess or grow 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. The position is REMOTE ELIGIBLE.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with one or more commercial cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • 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

Preferred Education:

Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a closely related field

Required Qualifications:

• 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

Other Information:

Must be a U.S. Citizen or permanent resident.

Contact Information:

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