Senior Research Data Infrastructure Engineer

at  University of Bristol

WHY JOIN US:

• Cutting-Edge Projects and Technologies: Work on purpose-led, innovative projects that push the boundaries of research and teaching in a collaborative and supportive environment, using the best digital research infrastructure technologies around.
• Multidisciplinary collaborations: Help academic colleagues over wide ranging topics to bring their research to life. No two days will be the same.
• Professional Development: Enjoy opportunities for continuous learning and mentorship, while contributing to the growth of your colleagues.
• Impactful Work: Your contributions will directly impact the success of research initiatives across various disciplines, making a tangible difference in the academic community, and enhance the openness of our research.

YOU SHOULD APPLY IF

We are looking for candidates with:

• Experience and Expertise: Significant skills and experience of managing Linux and large-scale storage systems using DevOps and infrastructure-as-code toolsets. Experience of parallel filesystems, object stores and cloud native technologies would be a significant benefit.
• Service Orientation: The ability to ensure the success of our users through the consistent delivery of high-quality services. To do this you will need to closely monitor our digital research infrastructure and effectively manage Quality of Service (QoS).
• Teamworking and collaboration: The ability to support and inspire a team who have the goal of delivering excellent services to a broad spectrum of users and needs.
• Project Management Skills: Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects, meeting deadlines while ensuring stakeholder engagement and satisfaction.
• Critical Thinking: The ability to identify problems and negotiate effective solutions. The Ability to solve problems in a structured and methodical manner, and to disseminate the lessons learnt.
• Excellent Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to tailor language and effectively engage with stakeholders across a spectrum of technical abilities. You will need to train and mentor colleagues and to produce excellent documentation in support of the service.

THE ROLE

Are you passionate about advancing research and teaching through cutting-edge data services? We are on the look-out for an experienced and purpose-led Senior Research Data Infrastructure Engineer to join our established and experienced team at the Advanced Computing Research Centre. Your work will directly impact key data services that enable the ground-breaking work of thousands of our academic colleagues every day.

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING?

At the University of Bristol our mission is to make a positive impact locally, nationally and globally by addressing society’s greatest challenges through our innovative research and education. Over the last 15 years, the Advanced Computing Research Centre (ACRC) has become an indispensable element of the University of Bristol’s world class research and teaching. The ACRC serves as the cornerstone of computational and data support for a diverse range of endeavors. With thousands of researchers and projects relying on our infrastructure, your role will be pivotal in driving impactful discoveries forward. For example, we provide highly available and highly protected storage for decades worth of climate simulations and a home for the renowned Children of the 90s longitudinal bioinformatics study. In addition, we facilitate data sharing and publication, such as for the innovative ‘Epic Kitchens’ Machine Learning data set, which are essential for collaborations across institutions. We also archive key data for long-term preservation.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Maintain Multi-Petabyte Infrastructure: Take the lead in ensuring uninterrupted access to our enterprise-grade Digital Research Data Infrastructure, critical for the success of many academic projects.
• Support Key Technologies: Showcase your skills and proficiency when working with key large-scale storage technologies, such as parallel file systems, object stores, policy driven data management tools and tape backup & archive systems.
• Support and Develop Key Services: Enable data sharing and publication services that are essential to collaboration across the academic community. Provide data backup and archiving using established tape technologies, and further leverage them to provide automated tiering of cold data to tape.
• Design and Implement Technologies: Lead the design and implementation of data life-cycle technologies, such as data movement and archiving, using a DevOps mindset and tools such as Git, and Infrastructure-as-Code scripting.