Computing Fellowship: DevOps Engineer

Company Description

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.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization.

Job Description

We are working on the ESCAPE project. ESCAPE is a cluster of Astronomy and Particle Physics research infrastructures with the goal of addressing the computational needs of those sciences.

You will be part of a small and motivated team in CERN’s Information Technology department and your work will focus on delivering a common data storage solution (Data Lake) spanning geographically distributed locations and optimizing the access to the data. The implementation of storage Quality of Service, optimization of network traffic and evaluation of caching technologies will be part of the project. Other aspects will include seamless integration of access to remote compute resources, and adaptation of science workflows. The work done in ESCAPE is pioneering R&D in our field and the prototype you will be working on is novel in its kind.

We work in close collaboration with scientists from HEP (primarily LHC) and Astrophysics/Astro-particle physics. While knowledge in those sciences is not a requisite, for the duration of your job you will be in contact with those communities and have the chance to understand their computing challenges and help addressing them. 

We are developing and integrating components mostly in Python and its good knowledge, together with skills in bash scripting are an important pre-requisite. Familiarity with distributed services such as scientific computing storage and data management solutions in High Energy Physics is an asset. We use modern technologies to operate and monitor the ESCAPE services and part of the work will offer the opportunity to become familiar with virtualisation and containerizations tools and techniques (Openstack/Kubernetees), configuration management tools (Puppet), monitoring and data analytics services (ElasticSearch/Spark/Kibana/Grafana).  We communicate primarily in English. 

Qualifications

Eligibility criteria:

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State;
• You have graduated, or are about to graduate, with a university degree (BSc or MSc level in computer science,engineering or another relevant course) and have no more than 4 years’ relevant experience after obtaining your degree;
• Kindly note that experience prior to the latest obtained degree will not be taken into account for the calculation of your overall years of experience.

Essential skills and experience:

• Experience in developing production-level applications using the Python programming language; knowledge of BASH scripting;
• Familiarity with the agile software development process and tools, such as GIT; 
• Familiarity with the DevOps practices: demonstrated capability to develop, integrate, test, deploy and commission prototype services in rapid cycle;
• You value collaborating, learning and sharing knowledge with colleagues and collaborators.

Desired technical skills:

• Experience in virtualisation, configuration and container technologies (Openstack, Puppet, Docker, Kubernetes);
• Familiarity with HEP storage solutions (dCache, EOS, DPM, StoRM, xrootd), and data management services (Rucio, FTS);
• Experience with data analytic and monitoring tools (ElasticSearch, Hadoop/Spark, Kibana, Grafana).    

Please note that CERN Staff members are not eligible to apply for a Fellowship.

Additional Information

CERN would very much like to benefit from your expertise, commitment and passion.  

In return, CERN will provide you with:

• An employment contract for between six months (minimum) up to a maximum of 36 months.
• A stipend ranging from 5,281 to 6,558 Swiss Francs per month (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN’s comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: an installation grant, family, child and infant allowances as well as travel expenses to and from Geneva.
• 2.5 days of paid leave per month.

Your Life @CERN

Find out more here: https://hr-dep.web.cern.ch/content/life-cern

This is how you can apply:

You will need the following documents to complete your application:

• A CV.
• A scanned PDF of your most recent relevant qualification.

We recommend to add two recent letters of recommendation, giving an overview of your academic and/or professional achievements. You can upload these letters at the time of application if you have them to hand. You will also be provided with a link as soon as you have submitted your application to forward to your referees to upload their letters confidentially. Please note this must be done before the closing date.

All applications should reach us no later than 9 August 2020.