Senior Research Systems Administrator

Boston College Introduction

Founded in 1863, Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university located six miles from downtown Boston with an enrollment of 9,654 full‑time undergraduates and 5,072 graduate and professional students. Ranked 37 among national universities, Boston College has 923 full‑time and 1,336 FTE faculty, 2,822 non‑faculty employees, an operating budget of $1.4 billion, and an endowment in excess of $3.9 billion.

The HPC Research Systems Administrator is a member of Research Services at Boston College. Research Services provide support for academic research at Boston College including management and maintenance of a High Performance Computing (HPC) research cluster. Additionally, Research Services provides consultation, research support and training to students, faculty and staff in a variety of domains such as scientific computation, computational mathematics, surveys and statistics and statistical software.

Research Services also offers support with coding, databases, and administration for research‑oriented computing hardware based within departments and institutes.

This position primarily provides Linux server administration for the HPC cluster. Additionally this role sets up and manages physical and virtual systems for academic research to support the needs of academic departments, research labs, the Boston College’s Research Core Facilities (cutting‑edge shared resources that offer services in multiple domains including high‑end instrumentation and education), the Institute of Scientific Research, and Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.

This individual designs, implements, and maintains research‑ and computation‑oriented solutions on BC’s HPC Linux cluster. This position will be a key consultant in latest trends including hardware (particularly GPU), job scheduling, and trends that improve performance of HPC systems. Helps promote technologies for teaching and research, and stays abreast of emerging trends and solutions.

• Provides Linux server and some Windows server administration services
• Sets up and maintains and research/teaching applications both on BC’s HPC Linux cluster and virtual machines
• Employs scripting to automate system administration tasks and processes
• Works with faculty and researchers to understand their current and future needs, and develops solutions to address them
• Training to users on existing system
• Installs and manages specialized teaching and research software
• Explores and promotes technologies that facilitate teaching and research
• Knowledge of job scheduling software: SLURM
• Ability to work with vendor support to address issues
• Work with other areas of IT to promote sustainable system architecture
• Commitment to continuous learning and skill development

• Understand the mission and strategic goals of the University.
• Be able to view and understand the implications of the larger picture both within Research Services and the University at large.
• Identify and understand complex challenges, work through the challenges, and recommend appropriate solutions.
• Be oriented to innovative approaches to problem solving.
• Have proven competencies to work in a team environment that aspires to service excellence with strong individual organizational, planning, and communication skills.
• Be able to build complex open‑sourced software applications.
• Knowledge of Spack for module building is a plus.

Two positions are available and will be hired at one of the following levels, depending on their experience (Not a full remote option; 2-3 days in office required):

• Senior Research Systems Administrator:
  Minimum five years of relevant system administration experience. Minimum three years of experience in an academic/research environment. Minimum one year of experience with virtualization, containerization and cloud platforms. Salary range: 107,350 to 134,200
• Research Systems Administrator:
  Minimum three years of relevant system administration experience. Minimum of one year experience in an academic/research environment. Salary range: 92,550 to 115,700

• Bachelor’s degree (or 7+ years…