Research Computing Storage Administrator

The Chronicle Of Higher Education, Inc.; Boulder (CO); Hybrid; USD 71,000 - 78,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule

Job summary

University of Colorado Boulder’s Office of Information Technology seeks a Research Computing Storage Administrator to manage the PetaLibrary storage service and cluster-attached storage across Alpine and Blanca. The role collaborates with Research Computing and follows guidance from senior storage staff to ensure reliability and recoverability at petabyte-scale.

Key duties include monitoring, capacity planning, disaster recovery testing, and storage compliance activities for federal

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in science, engineering, or related field.
• 2+ years of professional experience administering storage systems in a Linux/Unix environment (NFS/SMB).
• Experience with parallel file systems (GPFS/Lustre/BeeGFS) and ZFS is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Monitor storage infrastructure utilization and system metrics; build and maintain monitoring/alerting automation.
• Participate in storage expansion, upgrades, and improvements across PetaLibrary and cluster storage.
• Test and tune storage and data-transfer systems to increase performance and reliability.
• Document storage infrastructure and provide user-facing documentation.
• Administer storage accounts and allocations, including provisioning and quota management.
• Support disaster recovery, archiving tests, and compliance records for federal requirements.

Skills

Linux/Unix storage administration

Parallel file systems

NFS/SMB administration

Education

Bachelor's degree in science or engineering

Job description

Job Summary

The Office of Information Technology at CU Boulderencourages applications for a Research Computing StorageAdministrator! This role supports the PetaLibrary researchdata 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 sharedacross those systems (/scratch/alpine, backed by GPFS). Thisposition works in collaboration with other administrators on theResearch Computing team and receives technical guidance from seniorstorage staff.

The position contributes to the reliability, performance, andrecoverability of research data at petabyte scale. As federalrequirements applicable to research data continue to develop, thisposition supports storage-side compliance activity, includingevidence collection, access review, and configurationrecords.

CU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with allapplicable 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 toapply, including protected veterans and individuals withdisabilities.

Who We Are

Vision

• The Office of Information Technology will be valued by campusas a strategic, inclusive and innovative partner in advancinglearning and discovery in order to enable CU Boulder to be apremier public university.

Mission

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

Values

• Trust, as a foundation for how we engage with one another andwith campus partners, along with
• Avid curiosity in how to better support the campus and ourstakeholder's while
• Fostering empowerment and authentic engagement amongstourselves and
• Celebrating inclusivity that promotes a sense of belongingwhile 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 studentexperience
• Enable research competitiveness and
• Deliver core infrastructure and enterprise IT services forbusiness effectiveness.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

• Monitor storage infrastructure utilization and system metricsto anticipate and address failures within redundancy limits. Buildand maintain the automation behind that monitoring and alerting,including metrics collection, thresholds, and escalationpaths.
• Participate in the implementation of storage expansion,upgrades, and other front-end and back-end improvements acrossPetaLibrary, the parallel scratch filesystem, and cluster-attachedstorage. Works from designs and requirements set with seniorstaff.
• Test and tune storage and data-transfer systems to increaseperformance and reliability, with support from senior staff onfabric-level and parallel filesystem tuning.
• Maintain and/or document in support of the research computinginfrastructure, particularly with regard to storage and datatransfer systems, including both internal and user-facingdocumentation.
• Administer storage accounts and allocations, includingprovisioning, quota management, and external accountcoordination.
• Work on disaster recovery and archive testing, and supportstorage-side compliance activity including evidence collection,access review, and configuration records for federal requirementsapplicable to research data.

What You Should Know

• This position is in a hybrid work situation with Tuesdays onsite and trips to campus as needed to work on hardware in datacenters or to attend required meetings.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
• The position carries a general expectation to respond tocritical issues and incidents arising outside normal business hourswithin a reasonable time frame, as defined by the position’ssupervisor. This expectation supports commitments ResearchComputing has made that many of its services will have best-effortcoverage outside regular business hours. Independent participationin that rotation is expected within approximately six to twelvemonths 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 relatedfield. A combination of education and relevant experience asdescribed below may be substituted for the degree on a year foryear basis
• 2 years of professional experience administering storagesystems in a Linux or Unix Environment (NFS, SMB, and Red HatEnterprise 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 Unixenvironment, including a mixture of unprivileged and privilegedaccess.
• Ability to work effectively both within a team andindependently, as circumstances warrant.
• Ability to follow through on commitments in a timely andprofessional manner.
• Ability to work from a set of requirements to implement asolution.
• Ability to work within documented change control and to producean auditable record of configuration changes.
• Willingness to develop depth in parallel filesystemadministration and to participate in a shared after-hours responseexpectation as that depth develops.

What We Would Like You to Have

• Experience with parallel filesystems beyond basicadministration (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 HPCcontext.
• Experience planning or performing disaster recovery and archiverestoration 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, orGCP).
• Experience with data management systems (e.g., iRODS).
• Experience providing end-user support using a ticket trackingsystem.
• Experience with clustered system services (e.g., corosync,pacemaker).
• Familiarity with federal compliance frameworks in research orHPC setting.