Research Computing Platforms Engineer (Job Number: 25000576)
Advanced Research Computing
Grade 7: - £38,249 - £45,413 per annum
Open-Ended/Permanent - Full Time
Contracted Hours per Week: 35
Closing Date: 25-Aug-2025, 5:59:00 PM
Disclosure and Barring Service Requirement: Not Applicable.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DEMONSTRATE WHEN YOU APPLY/PERSON SPECIFICATION

When you apply it is important that you let us know what skills/experience you have from a similar role and/or what skills/experience you have which would make you right for this role. Further information about the role and responsibilities is at the end of this job description. Where a criteria has an asterisk* next to it, it may be given additional weighting when your application is considered.
Your application should cover the following criteria:

QUALIFICATIONS/EXPERIENCE

1. Educated to degree level (or equivalent experience) in computing or a related/applied discipline.
2. Experience of participating in internal or external networks to share and discuss good practice and develop strong and productive working relationships.
3. Experience of providing specialist advice and guidance to a range of customers and colleagues, including more senior colleagues.
4. Experience of implementing policies and procedures.

SKILLS/ABILITIES/KNOWLEDGE

1. Excellent spoken and written communication skills including the ability to develop effective working relationships, both internally and externally.

2. Strong digital competence across a range of digital skills including one or more of:-

• Unix operating systems such as Linux
• Shell scripting
• Computer languages such as Python or C
• Computer hardware such as servers, storage and networking.

1. Evidence of technical competencies and specialisations that are current with industry standards. Committed to continuing professional development to maintain professional recognition.
2. Ability to solve problems and decide on and plan appropriate solutions.
3. Knowledge and experience of ensuring compliance with regulatory and organisational policy and guidelines, including health and safety.
4. Ability to teach or train others on specific technical skills.
5. Experience of working as part of a team to achieve common goals as well as experience of working autonomously.

Create strong collegiate relationships with academics and combine technical knowledge with the needs of different research domains to develop, improve and maintain services designed to optimise researcher time to solution by making services that:

• Are stable and secure
• Are easy to use, featureful and flexible in response to changing needs
• Deliver fast and predictable performance
• Share specialist knowledge to colleagues within the research community, consultation and ensure effective knowledge transfer both across the institution and represent the University externally on matters of expertise.
• Contribute to both local and regional/national services, such as the Hamilton HPC system, our experimental Mosaic research cloud, the EPSRC tier-2 HPC system “Bede” and research computing infrastructure in academic departments. Work with teams in Computing and Information Services (CIS), Estates and/or external providers as appropriate

THE ROLE AND DEPARTMENT

The Directorate of Advanced Research Computing (ARC) provides a broad computational capability to underpin and help define the nature of research and innovation that can be undertaken with the institution.
ARC’s mission is to deliver a coherent strategy for the computational support of research: enabling research and innovation to be at the forefront of computational practice; enabling academic leadership through the adoption and evolution of leading technology; fostering associated expertise; and enhancing interdisciplinary collaborations. Leading-edge platforms including High Performance Computing, computational and cutting-edge data analytics methods, and growth and retention of vital capacity in research software engineering and technical R&D are at the core of this endeavour.
We organise our activity under three main pillars:
1. Research Computing Platforms
2. Research Software Engineering
3. Developing researcher computational skills
Which is delivered by the Administration, Research Computing Platforms (RCP) and Research Software Engineering (RSE) teams.
The Research Computing Platforms (RCP) team provides facilities, training and support for people, across the University, engaged in computationally demanding research. Join us and:

Provide HPC & Cloud facilities and support the people who use them to:

• Run large- or small-scale simulations, data analyses and machine learning workloads
• Have the capability to tackle problems difficult or impossible to achieve on most desktops or laptops
• Exploit the capacity to run many tasks at the same time

Create strong collegiate relationships with academics and combine technical knowledge with the needs of different research domains to develop, improve and maintain services designed to optimise researcher time to solution by making services that:

• Are stable and secure
• Are easy to use, featureful and flexible in response to changing needs
• Deliver fast and predictable performance
• Share specialist knowledge to colleagues within the research community, consultation and ensure effective knowledge transfer both across the institution and represent the University externally on matters of expertise.
• Contribute to both local and regional/national services, such as the Hamilton HPC system, our experimental Mosaic research cloud, the EPSRC tier-2 HPC system “Bede” and research computing infrastructure in academic departments. Work with teams in Computing and Information Services (CIS), Estates and/or external providers as appropriate.

We are a support unit that spans all Faculties across the University and encourage applications from experienced individuals from a diverse range of domains.
Further information about the role and the responsibilities is at the bottom of this job description.

For a chat about the role or any further information please contact;

• Dr Alan Real, Director, ARC alan.n.real@durham.ac.uk
• Mark Dixon, Head of Research Computing Platforms, ARC mark.c.dixon@durham.ac.uk
• Rebecca Appleby, ARC Administrator rebecca.appleby@durham.ac.u