System Administrator; BE-CSS-ISA--LD

System Administrator (BE-CSS-ISA--LD)

Contract

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.

Are you a skilled and experienced System Administrator and Computing Engineer? Do you want to contribute to the unique challenge of making all CERN particle accelerators function in an efficient and synchronised manner? Join CERN’s Controls Software & Services group, to work on the computing infrastructure needed to run the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Take Part!

The 24/7 availability of core control system services is critical to the surveillance and operation of CERN’s particle accelerators, enabling the organisation to fulfil its central mission. To ensure the robustness and scalability of those services and to open the door to multi-data-centre high-availability techniques to reinforce business continuity, the services are progressively being migrated to a new on-premises Kubernetes infrastructure, backed by modern network storage and Dev Ops technologies.

Our team helps make this a success through the development and evolution of this computing infrastructure needed as a core element of the accelerator complex controls.

You will have the opportunity to contribute and influence the evolution of this complex and challenging infrastructure, imprinting your remarkable engineering skills on mission-critical solutions for CERN, which will serve for the coming decades.

You will join:

• The BE Department, responsible for the beam generation, acceleration, diagnostics, controls and performance optimization for the LHC and its injector accelerators.
• The CSS Group , responsible for providing and supporting the controls software and infrastructure used to operate and maintain these particle accelerators 24 hours a day.
• The ISA Section, a dynamic and quality-oriented agile team, responsible for the CERN Accelerator control system computing infrastructure and system administration.

As aComputing Engineer specialised in System Administration,you will join a passionate team and take an important role in the operation of the CERN accelerator control system infrastructure. Furthermore, you will participate in numerous strategic projects for the future in terms of operating systems and container and orchestration technology.

In particular, you will:

• Perform system administration tasks for the Linux computers connected to the accelerator control system (control room consoles, data centre servers, real-time embedded platforms and virtual machines).
• Communicate with end-users to understand their needs and help translate these into appropriate solutions.
• Investigate, diagnose, and resolve operational problems in collaboration with end-users ranging from equipment specialists to operations teams.
• Participate actively in the strategic evolution of the accelerator control system infrastructure towards container technology hosted upon Kubernetes.

In particular:

• Provide containerisation mechanisms and tools for software development teams (base images, registry, security aspects).
• Contribute to the planning and migration of the infrastructure from bare metal to a clustered container orchestration platform.
• Advance, improve and upgrade the control system Kubernetes platform and associated services to follow technology evolution and adapt to the needs of users of the controls environment.
• Collaborate closely with engineers from the IT Department responsible for the general CERN IT infrastructure.
• Mentor and supervise junior engineers.

Master's degree or equivalent relevant experience in the field of Computer Science or a related field.

Experience:

• Proven experience in the operation of medium to large-scale distributed computing infrastructures, including:
• High-performan…