Department

Centrum voor Informatie Technologie

Organisation

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

The Center for Information Technology (CIT) of the University of Groningen (UG) is the most prominent university ICT centre in the Netherlands. With over 300 staff members, the CIT manages the necessary IT facilities and support processes for over 36,000 students and 7,500 staff members at the University, which ranks among the top 100 universities.

The CIT supports and facilitates academic research and university teaching through innovative data and IT solutions, consultancy, and training. Our mission is ‘teaching and research: supported by innovative and reliable IT services’. In order to optimally contribute to the University of Groningen’s strategic aims every day, the CIT works in a client-oriented manner through 22 self-organizing teams in five domains: Teaching, Research, Organization Systems, Basic Workplaces, and Infrastructure. Our core values are: respect, collegiality, togetherness, fun, openness, and commitment.

Job description

As High-Performance Computing (HPC) SysOps/DevOps, you will be part of the HPC team and mainly focus on developing, configuring, upgrading, testing, launching, and documenting our HPC clusters and HPC clouds, both internally and for our academic users. Thanks to our state-of-the-art technology, researchers can make use of computing power and superfast storage. Through this, the HPC team significantly contributes to academic research at the University of Groningen.

You will be involved in important developments within the HPC team. For instance, the current general computing cluster is now being replaced by a new cluster, which we are orchestrating via OpenStack. In this way, we can dynamically assign parts of our infrastructure to projects or specific groups of researchers, both through the bare-metal server as well as virtually. The team is also the founder of the Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information (EESSI) project, through which academic software is automated, built, and installed. The software stack can be used by researchers through our HPC cluster, through other HPC clusters, and in their workplaces. Our physical and virtual infrastructure is developed through the DevOps method and is rolled out in an automated manner.

In addition, we are developing an innovation lab for teaching and research together with suppliers and producers. This innovation lab will allow students and researchers to test their innovative ideas in practice.

Responsibilities
- roll-out and operation of and technical support for virtual and physical HPC infrastructure
- development and management of cloud infrastructure
- development and management of storage (Ceph/Lustre)
- research into new technologies: testing performance, stability, security, and features
- solving incidents.

Requirements

- relevant work experience (junior/mid-level)
- the ability to think and work at a university of applied sciences level
- experience with Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Redhat)
- a good command of both English and Dutch
- knowledge of Ceph, OpenStack, Proxmox, Bash, Ansible, Lustre, and Slurm is an advantage.

Personal characteristics:
- you must be a positive and solution-focused person who is dedicated to high client satisfaction
- you should be curious, able to ask the right questions, and able to listen well
- you must be able to substantiate your opinion well with factual information
- you should gain satisfaction from helping academics with their research
- you must work in a structured manner, know how to set priorities, and be able to achieve deadlines.

Conditions of employment

Contract length: 12 months.

What we offer:
In addition to a varied job in a dynamic work environment, in which you will maintain contacts within and outside the CIT, we offer the following terms of employment in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU):

- a maximum salary, depending on qualifications and experience, of €4,670 (salary scale 10) gross per month for a full-time position
- an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.33% end-of-year bonus over the annual gross income
- a temporary position for the period of one year, with the possibility of extension for an indefinite period on condition of good performance
- attractive secondary terms of employment, such as the Terms of Employment Options Model, good development opportunities, and favourable pension and leave regulations.

A Certificate of Good Conduct (VOG: Verklaring Omtrent Gedrag) may be requested for this position.

Job Application

You can apply for this position before 5 September 2022 – only submissions via the official application form will be considered.

The University of Groningen strives to be a university in which students and staff are respected and feel at home, regardless of differences in background, experiences, perspectives, and identities. We believe that working on our core values of inclusion and equality are a joint responsibility and we are constructively working on creating a socially safe environment. Diversity among students and staff members enriches academic debate and contributes to the quality of our teaching and research. We therefore invite applicants from underrepresented groups in particular to apply. For more information, see also our diversity policy webpage: https://www.rug.nl/[…]/

Our selection procedure follows the guidelines of the Recruitment code (NVP): https://www.nvp-hrnetwerk.nl/sollicitatiecode/

Unsolicited marketing is not appreciated.

Additional information

For additional information, please contact:

Wim Nap, HPC project manager
w.k.nap@rug.nl

Henk-Jan Zilverberg, HPC team leader
h.j.zilverberg@rug.nl

In your application, please always include the job opening ID 222538E

Digital application form