Research Facilitator

Position: RESEARCH FACILITATOR #00097442
Hiring Department

Information Technology
- Research

Are you seeking to make a difference in the lives of students? Are you desirous of enabling research that is changing our world? Would you like to have a strong influence in setting direction for a technology organization whose mission focuses on education, research, and application of knowledge to solve some of the world's great challenges? If so, we would like to talk to you.

If you are a potential member of the S&T information technology team and possess humility, coachability, approachability, introspection, and a passion for building relationships, then we would like to speak with you.

Job Description

This position serves as a primary technical consultant and liaison between the university's central IT department and the campus research community. The IT Research Facilitator enables and accelerates research by helping faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and students leverage advanced computing, data management, and information technology resources. This role involves performing technical consultations, providing training, and solving complex problems to support the planning, execution, and data lifecycle of diverse research projects.

The facilitator will analyze researchers' needs and connect them with appropriate technological solutions, taking a consultative approach to enhance existing research workflows and enable new avenues of inquiry.

Consultation and Support:

* Meet with researchers to assess their computational, data storage, networking, specialized hardware, software, and service requirements

* Recommend and facilitate access to appropriate IT solutions, including high performance computing (HPC) clusters, local or cloud resources, large-scale storage, machine learning algorithms, deep learning techniques, and neural network design

Grant Proposal Assistance:

* Collaborate with principal investigators (PIs) to develop the cyberinfrastructure, cybersecurity, data management, data analytics, and IT budget components for grant proposals, ensuring they meet the requirements of funding agencies

Training and Outreach:

* Design and deliver workshops, documentation, and training materials to educate the research community on available IT resources, best practices for data management, and the use of specialized research software

* Maintain appropriate documentation on developed programs/reports/trainings for users and for IT support staff

Technical Problem-Solving:

* Learn, understand, and guide the development of research workflows with various scopes

* Act as an advanced resource for troubleshooting complex technical issues related to research computing and software, escalating to and collaborating with other IT teams as needed

* Maintain existing technologies and aid in the development of new concepts, methods, technologies, and solutions

* Investigate and test new tools, systems, techniques, and software products

Service Development:

* Investigate best practices and reduce obstacles related to research workflows with various scopes

* Identify gaps in current IT service offerings for research and advocate for the development and implementation of new technologies and services to meet the evolving needs of the research community

* Contribute to the development of customer support strategies

Liaison Role:

* Foster strong working relationships between researchers and central IT staff, translating research needs into technical requirements and communicating IT policies and capabilities back to researchers

Shift

This position is onsite 8am-5pm M-F, and may be periodically required to work after hours, nights, weekends, and holidays as required to meet the needs of our customers. This may include managing impactful incidents, maintenance events, or project implementations

Minimum Qualifications

* Bachelor's degree in a STEM field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience

* At least 2 years of experience supporting technology in a research or academic environment

* Proficiency with programming/scripting languages common in research (e.g., Python, R, Bash)

* Proficiency with data analytic software, and data analysis (e.g. SPSS, Smart PLS,SAS)

* Strong customer service skills with the demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex technical topics to a lay audience through both verbal and written mediums

Preferred Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications:

* Master's or Ph.D. degree in a STEM field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience

* Extensive specialized technical expertise in advanced computational research, large-scale data analytics, specialized research cyberinfrastructure, machine learning algorithms, deep learning techniques, or neural network design

* Direct experience working with high-performance computing (HPC) systems (e.g., using schedulers like Slurm, managing software modules)

* Demonstrated experience in assisting with the technical components of research grant proposals

* Familiarity with research data management…