IceCube Computing Manager

Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center; Madison (WI); On-site; USD 122,000 - 149,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) is a scientific center within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. It manages IceCube computing facilities at UW–Madison and the South Pole, including data acquisition, storage and processing for a world-spanning collaboration of scientists.

The IceCube Computing Manager will lead a team of eight to ten IT professionals, ensuring data integrity, operational plans, and efficient distributed computing across global resources.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on and strategic IT experience.
• Experience leading and mentoring a team of computing and/or software professionals.
• Proven ability to collaborate across multi-institutional scientific or academic collaborations.
• Hands-on background in distributed High Throughput Computing and storage services for large data sets.
• Experience coordinating access and operations across remote and/or distributed computing centers.
• Experience summarizing performance, requirements, and operational plans in reports for leadership and sponsors.

Responsibilities

• May advise institutional or divisional leadership on CI topics. Participates in planning IT and research computing initiatives and strategies.
• Directs technical aspects of cyber infrastructure projects and contributes to research computing proposals with internal and external partners.
• Applies advanced computing concepts to design, deploy, and evaluate CI systems and data workflows.
• Contributes to CI policy development for the department, center, or institution.
• Prepares reports on project status for professional organizations, sponsors, and design reviews.
• Directs a team of staff providing CI resources and support; oversees hardware and software upgrades.
• Technical coordination with internal and external stakeholders; ensures effective collaboration with partner centers.

Job description

The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) is a scientific center within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. WIPAC research focuses on exploring the high-energy universe, including managing the operations of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. IceCube is a kilometer-scale neutrino detector located at the South Pole. Data collection from the detector is well underway and data will continue to be acquired and analyzed for many years. Details can be found at http://icecube.wisc.edu/.

The IceCube data center located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) includes about 25+PB of disk storage, 7000+ CPU cores, and 250+ GPUs. The computing systems at the South Pole consist of about 60 servers in different configurations that run the data acquisition, online filtering, and archiving services for the neutrino detector.

The IceCube Computing Manager is responsible for IceCube computing facilities and services. The primary focus is IceCube computing facilities at UW-Madison. The manager also has responsibility to provide timely access to data and computing services to the IceCube Collaboration, formed by about 400 scientists from 58 institutions in 14 countries. Our team manages significant computing resources distributed around the world that require sophisticated infrastructure orchestration.

Several collaboration partners provide computing resources which are operated in a coordinated way from WIPAC as a distributed computing infrastructure. Additional resources such as other academic clusters (grid) that offer opportunistic access, supercomputers, or commercial clouds are also integrated in this infrastructure. The IceCube Computing Manager coordinates the operations of this resource and works with users to ensure that the service meets requirements for data analysis.

The IceCube Computing Manager will lead a team of eight to ten IT professionals. As the leader of the cyberinfrastructure team, the hired individual will be responsible for:

Data management and computing services within the IceCube Neutrino Observatory Operations and Maintenance project (75%):

Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) computing facilities including computing, storage, networking and security (25%):

• Responsible for the integrity and availability of IceCube data.
• Manage the operations, near and long-range upgrade plans, and other improvements to the IceCube computing infrastructure at UW-Madison and the South Pole, including hardware and middleware services.
• Coordinate distributed computing infrastructure with IceCube Collaboration partners and ensure maximum usage and efficiency.
• Work closely with IceCube user group leads (simulation production, data processing and detector operations) to track requirements for computing services and develop operational plans to meet them.
• Independently pursue research and development on large scale scientific computing, and identify opportunities for reducing annual operating costs while maintaining reliability and performance.
• Regularly report on performance and usage of the IceCube computing services to the collaboration and the NSF.
• Work with external advisory parties including the IceCube Software and Computing Advisory Panel.

• This includes providing computing support for WIPAC researchers working on IceCube and other experiments including High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO), Askaryan Radio Array (ARA), Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), and Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G).

Job Summary:

The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) is a scientific center within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. WIPAC research focuses on exploring the high-energy universe, including managing the operations of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. IceCube is a kilometer-scale neutrino detector located at the South Pole. Data collection from the detector is well underway and data will continue to be acquired and analyzed for many years. Details can be found at http://icecube.wisc.edu/.

The IceCube data center located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) includes about 25+PB of disk storage, 7000+ CPU cores, and 250+ GPUs. The computing systems at the South Pole consist of about 60 servers in different configurations that run the data acquisition, online filtering, and archiving services for the neutrino detector.

The IceCube Computing Manager is responsible for IceCube computing facilities and services. The primary focus is IceCube computing facilities at UW-Madison. The manager also has responsibility to provide timely access to data and computing services to the IceCube Collaboration, formed by about 400 scientists from 58 institutions in 14 countries. Our team manages significant computing resources distributed around the world that require sophisticated infrastructure orchestration.

Several collaboration partners provide computing resources which are operated in a coordinated way from WIPAC as a distributed computing infrastructure. Additional resources such as other academic clusters (grid) that offer opportunistic access, supercomputers, or commercial clouds are also integrated in this infrastructure. The IceCube Computing Manager coordinates the operations of this resource and works with users to ensure that the service meets requirements for data analysis.

The IceCube Computing Manager will lead a team of eight to ten IT professionals. As the leader of the cyberinfrastructure team, the hired individual will be responsible for:

Data management and computing services within the IceCube Neutrino Observatory Operations and Maintenance project (75%):

Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) computing facilities including computing, storage, networking and security (25%):

• Responsible for the integrity and availability of IceCube data.
• Manage the operations, near and long-range upgrade plans, and other improvements to the IceCube computing infrastructure at UW-Madison and the South Pole, including hardware and middleware services.
• Coordinate distributed computing infrastructure with IceCube Collaboration partners and ensure maximum usage and efficiency.
• Work closely with IceCube user group leads (simulation production, data processing and detector operations) to track requirements for computing services and develop operational plans to meet them.
• Independently pursue research and development on large scale scientific computing, and identify opportunities for reducing annual operating costs while maintaining reliability and performance.
• Regularly report on performance and usage of the IceCube computing services to the collaboration and the NSF.
• Work with external advisory parties including the IceCube Software and Computing Advisory Panel.

• This includes providing computing support for WIPAC researchers working on IceCube and other experiments including High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO), Askaryan Radio Array (ARA), Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), and Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G).

Key Job Responsibilities:

• May advise institutional or divisional leadership on CI topics. Participates in the planning and development of institution-wide IT and research computing initiatives and strategies - 10%
• Directs the technical aspects of cyber infrastructure projects. Contributes to research computing, data science, and/or CI research proposals with internal and external partners. May lead a proposal as Principal Investigator - 15%
• Applies advanced and complex research computing, data, and/or CI research and development concepts to plan, design, develop, modify, debug, deploy, and evaluate highly complex research computing systems (software and/or hardware,) data science or computational science workflows, or CI software and technologies - 20%
• Applies advanced research and development practices, community standards, and department policies and procedures. Contributes to research and CI policy development for the department, research center, division, or institution - 5%
• Contributes to or prepares reports of project status and/or technical research for professional organizations, government/sponsors review boards, and design reviews - 5%
• Exercises supervisory authority, including hiring, transferring, suspending, promoting, managing conduct and performance, discharging, assigning, rewarding, disciplining, and/or approving hours worked of at least 2.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees - 10%
• Technical coordination with internal and external stakeholders - 10%
• Manages a team of research and technical staff providing CI resources and support. Directs the design, implementation, and recommendation of new hardware and software technologies for advancing complex research computing, data science, and CI projects - 25%

Compensation:

The minimum starting salary for the position is $135,000. Salary is negotiable based on experience and qualifications.

Required Qualifications:

5+ years of hands‑on and strategic IT experience, including:

• Experience leading and mentoring a team of computing and/or software professionals.
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively across multi-institutional scientific or academic collaborations.
• Hands‑on background in and high‑level architectural oversight of distributed High Throughput Computing and storage services for large data sets.
• Experience coordinating access and operations across remote and/or distributed computing centers.
• Experience summarizing performance, requirements, and operational plans in reports for internal leadership and/or federal grant sponsors (e.g., NSF), as well as presenting infrastructure strategies at conferences or through publications.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience guiding long‑term technical direction by working with non‑technical decision‑makers, faculty, and external partners through diplomatic relationship‑building.
• Understanding of scientific data formats and large‑scale data analysis techniques.
• Experience integrating and orchestrating workloads across diverse compute ecosystems, including partner clusters, commercial clouds (IaaS), and external supercomputing centers.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity standards, threat mitigation, and compliance policies in distributed scientific environments.

Education:

Master's degree or higher required in Physics, Computer Science or related field.

Institutional Statement on Diversity:

Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, including but not limited to, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, pregnancy, disability, or status as a protected veteran and other bases as defined by federal regulations and UW System policies. We promote excellence by acknowledging skills and expertise from all backgrounds and encourage all qualified individuals to apply. For more information regarding applicant and employee rights and to view federal and state required postings, visit the Human Resources Workplace Poster website.

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