Systems Administrator at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

About the job:

The CSIR has a vacancy for a System Administrator in the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) area, within the National Integration Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS), which is hosted by Next Generation Enterprises and Institution cluster. The incumbent will be responsible to maintain a Tier2 computing infrastructure for the WLCG. The position is based in Cape Town.

Key responsibilities:

• Administer and maintain a Tier2 High Performance Computing (HPC) facility for the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG);
• Ensure that the ALICE and/or ATLAS grid site is operational;
• Fulfil the required pledges to the ALICE and/or ATLAS experiment for computing and storage;
• Collaborate with colleagues internationally to maintain Tier2 computing infrastructure;
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, guidelines, and best practices for the Tier2 HPC environment;
• Monitor the health and performance of the Tier2 HPC environment;
• Participate on Human Capital Development initiatives;
• Contributing and identifying appropriate use and operational best practices
• Lead certain data/service migration projects and contribute on new projects or upgrade of systems;
• Back-up servers and associated operating systems and software;
• Conduct research on Tier2 HPC system and related hardware and software in support of procurement and system development; 
• Take initiatives and be a team player.

Qualifications, skills and experience:

• A National diploma or Bachelor’s degree in information technology or related field (e.g. computer systems engineering, computer science) with at least six years’ experience in LINUX system administration environment, of which five years should be in HPC;
• Must have experience in the following:
• Massively distributed systems and high throughput computing.
• Batch systems, HTCondor or similar.
• Implementations of cluster technologies;
• Linux installation and packaging tools, especially RPM;
• Configuration management via ansible/puppet/salt/chef.
• Software defined storage systems, EOS/CEPH/GlusterFS
• Scripting tools, bash, python, yaml etc.
• Creating Cron jobs and automation scripts
• Version control systems, git/svn/mercurial.
• Industry certification in related ICT field would be advantageous.
• Demonstrate leadership in either field of HPC (storage, cluster and configuration, interconnects or applications porting and tuning)
• Knowledge of programming (e.g. C, C++ and Fortran)
• Should have knowledge with High Energy Physics computing infrastructures.
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills
• Ability to work in a collaborative environment
• Detail-oriented, strong work ethic and high standard of excellence
• Fast learner, achiever, sets high personal goals
• Must be able to multitask projects and meet their respective deadlines
• All international qualifications require an evaluation report / certificate issued by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). 

Closing date: 04 July 2023