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, the Institute of Scientific Research, and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.

This individual designs, implements, and maintains research- and computation-oriented solutions on BC’s HPC Linux cluster. The 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 research/teaching applications 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
• Provides training to users on existing system
• Installs and manages specialized teaching and research software
• Explores and promotes technologies that facilitate teaching and research
• Has knowledge of job scheduling software: SLURM
• Works with vendor support to address issues
• Collaborates with other areas of IT to promote sustainable system architecture
• Committed to continuous learning and skill development

• Understands the mission and strategic goals of the University
• Views and understands the implications of the larger picture both within Research Services and the University at large
• Identifies and understands complex challenges, works through them, and recommends appropriate solutions
• Is oriented to innovative approaches to problem solving
• Has proven competencies to work in a team environment that aspires to service excellence with strong individual organizational, planning, and communication skills
• Builds 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 experience (not a full remote option; 2–3 days in office required). Minimum requirements for each level:

• Senior Research Systems Administrator: Minimum five years of relevant system administration experience, minimum three years in an academic/research environment, minimum one year 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 one year in an academic/research environment. Salary range: $92,550 to $115,700.

• Bachelor’s degree (or 7+ years experience in HPC system administration and architecture)
• Hands-on experience with setting up and managing Linux and Windows physical and virtual servers
• E…