Introduction

Are you a big data Engineer willing to take an active role in the support of the big data infrastructure and services including those used by the LHC accelerator operations team? Then join CERN and take part in one of the most incredible scientific experiments in the world!

You will join:

The Streaming and Analytics Services (SAS) section which is responsible for all aspects of big data services at CERN including support or the control and operation of the LHC accelerator and support for the activities of the rest of CERN communities. More information on the IT Department and Database group is at: http://cern.ch/it-dep/ and http://cern.ch/it-dep/db/ and on the databases at CERN DB blog at: http://db-blog.web.cern.ch/.

Functions

As a big data Engineer in the Database Services (DB) Group, your main activities will consist of:

•       System administration of big data infrastructure (Apache Hadoop: YARN, HDFS, HBase, Spark, Kafka, Jupyter Notebooks) through multiple product lifecycle environments, from development to mission-critical production systems.

•       Configuration and support of big data platforms: architecture, evolution, migration, upgrades and patches, including monitoring of system health and performance, to ensure high levels of performance, availability, and security.

•       Consultancy, assistance and advice to end users, including model schema, analytics and big data pipeline design.

•       Sharing domain and technical expertise, providing technical mentorship and training to peers.

Master's degree or equivalent relevant experience in the field of Computing Science or a science discipline (e.g. Physics) with significant computing content or a related field.

Experience:

The successful candidate should have demonstrated experience in following fields:

• Operation of large scale production big data environments.
• Technical and troubleshooting skills with Hadoop components, specially of big data stores such as Apache HBase or equivalent.
• Devops operations (Linux systems) experience in an Agile development environment - Exposure to puppet configuration management or equivalent.
• Performance tuning, optimization, replication techniques, clustering, partitioning and security issues.
• Backups, restores, recovery.

Additional experience in following fields would be an asset:

• Data science notebooks and analytics engines such as Jupyter and Apache Spark.
• Container Orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes.

Technical competencies:

• Administration of databases: familiarity with large-scale and high-availability database environments.
• Knowledge of system configuration tools: familiarity with automation tools for infrastructure delivery and management.
• Knowledge of programming techniques and languages: uNIX shell script, or Python programming is required. SQL and Java knowledge would be an advantage.
• Capturing and analysis of requirements for ICT systems: ability to collect the needs of users and to manage the different phases of a project.

Behavioural competencies:

• Solving problems: identifying, defining and assessing problems, taking action to address them.
• Achieving results: delivering high quality work on time and fulfilling expectations.
• Working in teams: building and maintaining constructive and effective work relationships
• Demonstrating flexibility: readily absorbing new techniques and working practices; proposing new or improved ways of working; adapting quickly and resourcefully to shifting priorities and requirements.
• Learning and sharing knowledge: keeping up-to-date with developments in own field of expertise and readily absorbing new information; sharing knowledge and expertise freely and willingly with others; coaching others to ensure knowledge transfer.

Language skills:

• Spoken and written English: ability to understand and speak in professional contexts. Ability to draw-up technical specifications and/or scientific reports and to make oral presentations.
• Ability to understand and speak French or an undertaking to acquire it rapidly.

Eligibility and closing date:

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We welcome applications from all Member States and Associate Member States.

This vacancy will be filled as soon as possible, and applications should normally reach us no later than 15.01.2021 until 12:00 pm CET time.

Employment Conditions

Contract type: Limited duration contract (2 years). Subject to certain conditions, holders of limited-duration contracts may apply for an indefinite position.

These functions require:

• Work during nights, Sundays and official holidays, when required by the needs of the Organization.
• Stand-by duty, when required by the needs of the Organization.

Job grade: 6-7

Job reference: IT-DB-SAS-2020-148-LD

Benchmark Job Title: Computing Engineer