Information Technology Architect

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a prestigious research and development organization that plays a vital role in the study of the universe. Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) is a nonprofit organization that manages and operates the NRAO under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Observatory is a hub for technological and scientific collaboration, operating state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community.

The Observatory has been instrumental in the study of black holes, galaxies, and the early universe.

NRAO is seeking an experienced Enterprise IT Technology Architect. The Information Technology Architect provides strategic and technical architectural leadership for the infrastructure and platform ecosystem that enables the NRAO’s scientific mission. This position is responsible for defining, designing, and guiding the implementation of scalable, resilient, high-performance technology architectures supporting scientific computing, large-scale data processing, high-capacity storage, advanced networking, and geographically distributed research infrastructure.

Working collaboratively with the observatory's Enterprise IT Teams, Software Architect, and Data Architect, the Technology Architect will establish the long-term technical direction necessary to support current scientific operations and the next generation of radio telescopes. The position will play a critical role in developing technology strategies and architectural solutions capable of supporting increasingly computationally intensive scientific workloads, high-volume data movement, and the generation, processing, storage, and preservation of petabyte-scale scientific datasets.

The successful candidate will possess extensive experience architecting and implementing large-scale enterprise and high-performance computing infrastructure, with particular depth in high-performance storage architectures, and advanced networking technologies. This individual must demonstrate the ability to evaluate emerging technologies, translate complex scientific and computational requirements into actionable architectural designs, and guide technical decisions that balance performance, scalability, reliability, operational sustainability, and total cost of ownership.

This position will be based in Albuquerque, NM, Socorro, NM, Charlottesville, VA or Green Bank, WV. For well-qualified candidates, a remote work arrangement may be considered.

The duties and responsibilities of the CISO will include, but are not limited to:

• Develop and maintain enterprise technology architectures, standards, principles, and reference designs for scientific computing and supporting infrastructure.
• Assist the technical teams in EIT in developing working designs for infrastructure and platform that meet the scientific requirements for usability, availability, capacity, and performance.
• Establish architectural roadmaps addressing near-term operational requirements and long-term scientific computing demands over 12-, 24-, and 36-month planning horizons and beyond.
• Collaborate with Enterprise IT Teams, Software, and Data Architects to ensure alignment between infrastructure capabilities, application architectures, scientific data workflows, and data management strategies.
• Translate scientific requirements, computational workload characteristics, and anticipated data growth into infrastructure designs and implementation strategies.
• Lead technical evaluations, architectural tradeoff analyses, technology selection, and infrastructure modernization initiatives.
• Develop architectural documentation, including conceptual, logical, and physical designs, technology standards, integration specifications, and implementation recommendations.
• Evaluate infrastructure solutions against performance, availability, security, interoperability, scalability, and lifecycle cost requirements.
• Provide architectural guidance to engineering and operations teams responsible for implementing, administering, and supporting infrastructure platforms.
• Other duties may be assigned.

The successful candidate will join a team of professionals engaged in research and development in the fields of science, engineering, software development, and education. Work is typically performed in a research or development environment. Must be able to operate a personal computer. Occasional travel (domestic and…