Reliability Engineer for Forecast Delivery

The role

We are in search of a highly motivated analyst to work in the newly formed Application Delivery section at ECMWF. In this role, you will support ECMWF’s critical operational production systems, in particular data acquisition and observation pre-processing, and weather product generation and delivery. Much of the work involves analysis of events which arise in the systems and working with developers and infrastructure teams to implement improvements to system observability, quality, and reliability.

The Team

The role sits in the Forecast Delivery Team, within the Application Delivery Section of our Computing Department. The Section provides platforms and services that enable ECMWF teams to consume computing resources at different levels (PaaS, SaaS) and to consistently deploy applications with different levels of support to a high degree of quality and reliability.

The Section achieves this through innovation in the areas of computer systems administration automation, application deployment and operation, reliability engineering, identity and access management, container orchestration, observability (monitoring, logging, and tracing), and PaaS/SaaS application development.

About ECMWF

ECMWF is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It is an intergovernmental organisation created in 1975 by a group of European nations and is today supported by 35 Member and Co-operating States, mostly in Europe. The Centre’s mission is to serve and support its Member and Co-operating States and the wider community by developing and providing world-leading global numerical weather prediction. ECMWF functions as a 24/7 research and operational centre with a focus on medium and long-range predictions and holds one of the largest meteorological archives in the world. The success of its activities relies primarily on the talent of its scientists, strong partnerships with its Member and Co-operating States and the international community, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and the use of innovative technologies such as machine learning across its operations.

ECMWF is a multi-site organisation comprising of three duty stations -  its headquarters based since its creation in Reading, UK, a data centre and offices in Bologna, Italy, and offices in Bonn, Germany. ECMWF has a hybrid organisation model which allows its staff to mix office working and teleworking. This generous and flexible model provides our staff with considerable flexibility to spend time outside or away from their duty station and decide how they wish to manage their professional working time at ECMWF. ECMWF is an organisation that values the whole being and understands and values the need for flexibility in the way its staff work.

For additional details, see www.ecmwf.int

Main duties and key responsibilities

• Supporting the ECMWF critical operational forecast production systems, in particular:
  • data acquisition and observation pre-processing
  • product generation, dissemination and archiving
• Automation of the deployment of software to containers, VMs, or bare metal
• Developing observability capabilities for services and their underlying systems
• Advising on quality assurance for new contributions and changes to critical operational systems
• Advising on and testing new developments targeted for operational implementation
• Contributing to documentation and training, including cross-training within the team
• Advocating for reliability engineering within ECMWF and its partners
• Participating in regular 24-hour on-call rotas for any critical systems and services in the relevant areas
• Any other relevant domains related to the team’s portfolio

What we are looking for

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with a co-operative nature
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proactive continuous improvement approach
• Self-motivated, and able to work with minimal supervision
• Dedication and enthusiasm to work in a geographically distributed team 
• Ability to work efficiently and complete diverse tasks in a timely manner

Education and experience

• A university degree (EQF Level 6) or equivalent industry experience
• Experience in a mission-critical 24/7 operational environment
• Experience in an NWP and/or suites and/or forecast production domain is desirable but not essential – training will be provided

Knowledge and skills

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet precisely all these criteria.

In particular, we welcome applications from candidates with other backgrounds, to join this multi-disciplinary team.

Demonstrable knowledge and skills in some of the following:

• Programming (any language) or scripting (Python, Ruby, Perl, Go)
• Cloud systems: Containers, Docker, Ansible, Terraform, AWS or similar
• The server, storage and networking components of Cloud applications
• Observability, monitoring, logging and analytics, tracing applications
• General Linux system administration

Please provide clear examples of your knowledge and experience in the space provided on the application form.

Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and interviews will be conducted in English. A good knowledge of one of the Centre’s other working languages (French or German) is an advantage but not required.

Other information

Grade remuneration

The successful candidate will be recruited at the A2 grade, according to the scales of the Co-ordinated Organisations and the annual basic salary will be EUR 73,201 net of tax. ECMWF also offers a generous benefits package, including a flexible teleworking policy. The position is assigned to the employment category STF-PL as defined in the ECMWF Staff Regulations. Full details of salary scales and allowances available on the ECMWF website at www.ecmwf.int/en/about/jobs, including the ECMWF Staff Regulations and the terms and conditions of employment.

Starting date:              As soon as possible

Length of contract:   Approximately four years to 30 Sept 2028 (with the possibility of further extensions)

Location:                    The position will be based at ECMWF’s duty station in Bologna, Italy

As a multi-site organisation, ECMWF has adopted a hybrid organisation model which allows flexibility to staff to mix office working and teleworking.

Successful applicants and members of their family forming part of their households will be exempt from immigration restrictions.

Videoconference interviews (via Microsoft Teams) are expected to take place during May 2024.

Who can apply

Applicants are invited to complete the online application form by clicking on the apply button below.

At ECMWF, we consider an inclusive environment as key for our success. We are dedicated to ensuring a workplace that embraces diversity and provides equal opportunities for all, without distinction as to race, gender, age, marital status, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity and culture. We value the benefits derived from a diverse workforce and are committed to having staff that reflect the diversity of the countries that are part of our community, in an environment that nurtures equality and inclusion.

Applications are invited from nationals from ECMWF Member States and Co-operating States.

ECMWF Member and Co-operating States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

In these exceptional times, we also welcome applications from Ukrainian nationals for this vacancy.  

Applications from nationals from other countries may be considered in exceptional cases.