Temporary Computational Science Specialist

Position Information

Posting Number: PG195758TM

Position Number: 17

LDM
02

Position Type:
Temporary

The primary purpose of this position is to assist researchers and faculty in the College of Sciences in using College, University, and external high-performance computing (HPC) clusters and other scientific computing resources in collaboration with College faculty, including the Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC). This role will build and maintain bioinformatics infrastructure and databases on campus HPC, design and implement example bioinformatics pipelines, and develop training materials for Bioinformatics graduate students, faculty, and staff.

The position mentors and trains graduate students and postdocs in Unix, Python, shell scripting, and HPC for Bioinformatics, based on shared resources for the College of Science.

The Computational Science Specialist plays a critical role in enabling researchers to migrate, implement, and optimize computational workloads on NC State's HPC systems and external resources, including national centers and cloud platforms. This position provides hands-on computational science and bioinformatics support to faculty, researchers, graduate students, and new investigators across the research community. The position is part of the Sciences IT team and reports to the Assistant Director of Information Technology.

• Research Computing & HPC Support:
  Assist researchers in moving, configuring, and running computational workloads on NC State HPC systems, college-level resources (including BRC), and external HPC facilities such as national centers and cloud platforms.
• Provide ongoing computational science support to faculty, researchers, graduate students, and new users of research computing infrastructure.
• Assist faculty with budgets, allocations, and proposal components related to access to HPC and advanced computing resources.
• Collaborate with research groups in the Bioinformatics Research Center and other campus units.
• Support bioinformatics workflows, scientific software, data analysis, visualization, and training initiatives.

• Provide expertise in bioinformatics computing, including pipeline development, optimization, and troubleshooting.
• Support analysis of diverse biological data types, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) and phenotypic data.
• Assist with scientific analysis, data visualization, and interpretation of modeled or measured datasets.
• Develop example code, templates, workflows, and documentation to support reproducible research practices.

• Maintain and install scientific software and bioinformatics tools in HPC environments.
• Develop, deploy, and maintain containers using platforms such as Docker and Apptainer (Singularity).
• Maintain knowledge of workflow management systems, virtual machines, and container orchestration approaches.
• Design and maintain databases to store and manage biological datasets, ensuring accessibility and sustainability for research groups.

• Provide expertise and example code for data visualization using commonly used scientific visualization tools.
• Support the development of interactive and reactive web applications for research dissemination (e.g., Shiny).
• Assist researchers in building databases and research-facing websites where appropriate.

• Create and deliver custom training modules, workshops, and documentation on research computing, bioinformatics, and data analysis topics.
• Focus on skills development and computational literacy for graduate students and early-career researchers.
• Contribute to shared knowledge bases and user guides supporting campus-wide scientific computing initiatives.

• Collaborate with computational researchers, faculty, and research staff across disciplines.
• Support other scientific computing initiatives within the Sciences IT team as needed.
• Serve as a liaison between researchers and IT to improve research computing services and infrastructure.

• Work Schedule:
  
  Monday–Friday, 8am–5pm; flexible arrangements (including…