Research Computing Storage Administrator

CU Boulder; Boulder (CO); Hybrid; USD 71,000 - 78,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Retirement plans

Paid time off

Tuition assistance for dependents

ECO Pass for transit

Job summary

CU Boulder’s Office of Information Technology is hiring a Research Computing Storage Administrator to support the PetaLibrary data storage service and cluster storage for Alpine and Blanca. The role ensures reliability, performance, and recoverability of petabyte-scale data, and contributes to storage-side federal compliance activities.

The position collaborates with other administrators and reports to senior storage staff, with a hybrid schedule and on-site work as needed for hardware tasks and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required or equivalent education/experience.
• Two years of professional storage systems administration experience in Linux/Unix environments.
• Experience with parallel file systems such as GPFS, Lustre, or BeeGFS.

Responsibilities

• Monitor storage infrastructure utilization and system metrics; build and maintain monitoring and alerting.
• Participate in storage expansion, upgrades, and improvements across PetaLibrary and cluster storage.
• Test and tune storage and data-transfer systems for performance and reliability with guidance from senior staff.
• Maintain documentation for storage and data transfer systems, including user-facing docs.
• Administer storage accounts and quotas; coordinate external accounts.
• Support disaster recovery, archiving tests, and compliance activities.

Skills

Linux administration

Storage systems management

Parallel file systems knowledge

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's Degree in science, engineering, or related field

Tools

GPFS

Lustre

BeeGFS

NFS

SMB

Job description

Job Summary

The Office of Information Technology at CU Boulder encourages applications for a Research Computing Storage Administrator! This role supports the PetaLibrary research data storage service and the storage components of CURC's HPC and condo compute clusters. That currently means Alpine and Blanca, including the high-performance parallel scratch filesystem shared across those systems (/scratch/alpine, backed by GPFS). This position works in collaboration with other administrators on the Research Computing team and receives technical guidance from senior storage staff.

The position contributes to the reliability, performance, and recoverability of research data at petabyte scale. As federal requirements applicable to research data continue to develop, this position supports storage-side compliance activity, including evidence collection, access review, and configuration records.

CU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. We are committed to creating a workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity, and we encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

Who We Are

Vision

• The Office of Information Technology will be valued by campus as a strategic, inclusive and innovative partner in advancing learning and discovery in order to enable CU Boulder to be a premier public university.

Mission

• The Office of Information Technology enables campus priorities by providing high-value IT services and solutions.

Values

• Trust, as a foundation for how we engage with one another and with campus partners, along with
• Avid curiosity in how to better support the campus and our stakeholder's while
• Fostering empowerment and authentic engagement amongst ourselves and
• Celebrating inclusivity that promotes a sense of belonging while acknowledging that each person is unique and valued.

Strategy

OIT will advance learning and discovery by delivering high-value reliable IT services and solutions that:

• Provide a fluid and adaptable academic and student experience
• Enable research competitiveness and
• Deliver core infrastructure and enterprise IT services for business effectiveness.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

• Monitor storage infrastructure utilization and system metrics to anticipate and address failures within redundancy limits. Build and maintain the automation behind that monitoring and alerting, including metrics collection, thresholds, and escalation paths.
• Participate in the implementation of storage expansion, upgrades, and other front-end and back-end improvements across PetaLibrary, the parallel scratch filesystem, and cluster-attached storage. Works from designs and requirements set with senior staff.
• Test and tune storage and data-transfer systems to increase performance and reliability, with support from senior staff on fabric-level and parallel filesystem tuning.
• Maintain and/or document in support of the research computing infrastructure, particularly with regard to storage and data transfer systems, including both internal and user-facing documentation.
• Administer storage accounts and allocations, including provisioning, quota management, and external account coordination.
• Work on disaster recovery and archive testing, and support storage-side compliance activity including evidence collection, access review, and configuration records for federal requirements applicable to research data.

What You Should Know

• This position is in a hybrid work situation with Tuesdays on site and trips to campus as needed to work on hardware in data centers or to attend required meetings.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
• The position carries a general expectation to respond to critical issues and incidents arising outside normal business hours within a reasonable time frame, as defined by the position's supervisor. This expectation supports commitments Research Computing has made that many of its services will have best-effort coverage outside regular business hours. Independent participation in that rotation is expected within approximately six to twelve months rather than at hire.

What We Can Offer

• The annual salary range is $70,900 - $77,980

Benefits

At the University of Colorado Boulder, we are committed to supporting the holistic health and well‑being of our employees. Our comprehensive benefits package includes medical, dental, and retirement plans; generous paid time off; tuition assistance for you and your dependents; and an ECO Pass for local transit. As one of Boulder County's largest employers, CU Boulder offers an inspiring academic community and access to world‑class outdoor recreation. Explore additional perks and programs through the CU Advantage program.

Be Statements

Be collaborative. Be groundbreaking. Be Boulder.

What We Require

• Bachelor's Degree in science, engineering, or other related field. A combination of education and relevant experience as described below may be substituted for the degree on a year for year basis
• 2 years of professional experience administering storage systems in a Linux or Unix Environment (NFS, SMB, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux preferred) including one year combined experience with any of the following:
• ZFS in any Unix environment (e.g., Solaris, BSD, or Linux)
• Parallel file systems (e.g., GPFS, Lustre, or BeeGFS)

What You Will Need

• Ability to work in a many-user networked Linux or Unix environment, including a mixture of unprivileged and privileged access.
• Ability to work effectively both within a team and independently, as circumstances warrant.
• Ability to follow through on commitments in a timely and professional manner.
• Ability to work from a set of requirements to implement a solution.
• Ability to work within documented change control and to produce an auditable record of configuration changes.
• Willingness to develop depth in parallel filesystem administration and to participate in a shared after-hours response expectation as that depth develops.

What We Would Like You to Have

• Experience with parallel filesystems beyond basic administration (e.g., Lustre, GPFS, BeeGFS).
• Experience with hierarchical / tiered storage systems.
• Experience with hardware and/or software RAID.
• Experience with network file systems and data transfer systems (e.g., NFS, SMB, Globus/GridFTP).
• Experience monitoring and tuning TCP/IP networks.
• Experience administering or tuning a high-speed fabric (InfiniBand or high-speed Ethernet) in a storage or HPC context.
• Experience planning or performing disaster recovery and archive restoration tests.
• Experience with systems monitoring tools and processes, including metrics and alerting.
• Experience with one or more configuration management systems (Puppet or Ansible preferred).
• Experience with revision control systems (git preferred).
• Experience with cloud storage platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Experience with data management systems (e.g., iRODS).
• Experience providing end-user support using a ticket tracking system.
• Experience with clustered system services (e.g., corosync, pacemaker).
• Familiarity with federal compliance frameworks in research or HPC setting.