Computing Engineer (IT-ST-PDS-2021-26-LD)

At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter – fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Introduction

Join us to evolve the data transfer system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which connects CERN with all its international partners. CERN is the birthplace of the World Wide Web and one of the world leading laboratories for particle physics. Join the Storage Group in CERN’s IT Department as a Software Engineer (operation and development) for a unique challenge as the next step in your career. CERN, take part!

CERN’s Storage Group is responsible for enabling data access for the laboratory and most notably to archive long-term preserve and distribute LHC data to a worldwide scientific community. Today we transfer yearly more than 1 Exabyte of data and we operate a heterogeneous disk/tape system, with several large EOS disk farms, AFS and Ceph clusters. In total the group handles more than 400 petabytes of data across about 2000 data servers (60,000 disks) and 35,000 high-capacity tapes.

CERN’s storage systems are continuously evolved to adapt to changing user’s needs with respect to functionality and performance and to further reduce their operational costs at CERN and its partner institutions.

More information on the IT Department is at: https://information-technology.web.cern.ch/.

Functions

The selected candidate will join the Physics Data Services section (PDS), contributing to the service development, deployment and operations activities of the Storage (ST) group.

He/she will participate to the service operations and development of FTS, the CERN File Transfer Service, a CERN open source software for reliable and large-scale data transfers to support the physics community at CERN, and in the World-Wide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG).

As a Software Engineer you will:

• Participate in the service operation of the large- scale transfer services provided by the group.
• Contribute to the development of the data transfer system implementation for CERN and WLCG experiments.
• Maintain and improve the documentation of systems developed by the group (including deployment guides and end user documentation) together with other members of the section.
• Participate in the support effort provided by the group (user support and incident response) for the transfer and storage services, including the participation to on-call duties.

Master’s degree or PhD or equivalent relevant experience in the field of information technologies or a related field.

Experience

The candidate should have demonstrated practical experience in at least some of the following areas:

• In-depth experience in Object-oriented software design and development in C++.
• Practical experience with development, testing and debugging of distributed systems.
• Practical experience with scripting languages (python, shell scripting, others).
• Experience in system administration and software design in Linux.

The following additional experience would be an asset:

• Service operations and deployment of the large scale distributed services.
• Distributed trust systems and public key infrastructures.
• Current networking and storage technologies such as software defined networking and distributed/cloud storage systems.
• Database technology development (MySQL or similar).
• Cluster-wide configuration and deployment tools such as Puppet, Docker/Kubernetes.

Technical competencies

• Development of system software (drivers, system configuration and monitoring, etc.): masters state of the art software development tools.
• Testing, diagnosing and optimization of software: analytic skills to identify and resolve problems with storage components or client applications.
• Re-use, refactoring, integration and porting of existing software.
• Knowledge and application of software life-cycle tools and procedures: architecture and design of ICT systems.

Behavioural competencies

• Achieving results: delivering prompt and efficient service taking into account customer needs.
• Demonstrating flexibility: readily absorbing new techniques and working practices; proposing new or improved ways of working actively participating in the implementation of new processes and technologies.
• Solving problems: seeking and integrating other points of view when tackling an issue; consulting experts in the field and undertaking benchmarking.
• Working in teams: building and maintaining constructive and effective work relationships.
• Learning and sharing knowledge: seeking feedback from colleagues and other stakeholders about ways of increasing competence proposing ways to improve or streamline existing procedures, processes and methodologies.

Language skills

• Good knowledge of English is required; ability to draw-up technical specifications and/or scientific reports and to make oral presentations. 
• Basic knowledge of French or an undertaking to acquire it rapidly.

Eligibility and closing date

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN’s mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We welcome applications from all Member States and Associate Member States.

This vacancy will be filled as soon as possible, and applications should normally reach us no later than 30 March 2021.

Employment conditions

Contract type: Limited duration contract (five years). Subject to certain conditions, holders of limited-duration contracts may apply for an indefinite position.

These functions require:

• Participation in a regular stand-by duty, including nights, Sundays and official holidays.
• Work during nights, Sundays and official holidays.
• Work during nights, Sundays and official holidays, when required by the needs of the Organization.
• Shift work, when required by the needs of the Organization.
• Stand-by duty, when required by the needs of the Organization.

Job grade: 6–7

Job reference: IT-ST-PDS-2021-26-LD

Benchmark job title: Computing Engineer