The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an international organisation supported by 32 States*. Its prime objectives are the operational production of analyses, medium-range forecasts of weather and ocean waves and seasonal forecasts as well as scientific and technical research directed to the improvement of these forecasts. ECMWF operates a large computing facility including supercomputers, data archiving systems and networks. A detailed description is available at:

www.ecmwf.int/services/computing/overview

ECMWF’s current High Performance Computing Facility comprises two IBM compute clusters running the AIX UNIX operating system, each with 274 x 32-CPU nodes based on POWER6 technology, and two storage clusters serving 1.2 petabytes of disk storage. This system is at the core of a highly available IT infrastructure for the daily production of weather forecasts according to a tight operational schedule

Main duties:

The post is in the HPC group in the Systems Software Section of ECMWF’s Computer Division.

The HPC group supports the High Performance Computing Facility, providing computing resources for ECMWF’s operational activities and research programme as well as to its Member States*. The successful applicant will work as part of a small team that ensures that the systems continue to provide the high levels of service that are expected of them.

The main duties of the post include:

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  Planning and scheduling upgrades to the ECMWF’s HPC system
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  Installing, maintaining and configuring the operating system and standard utilities on the HPC facilities
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  Configuring the user environment on these systems
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  Resolving user and operational problems relating to the operating system or to software packages maintained by the section
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  Providing general day-to-day support, including 24-hour on-call support
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  Ensuring that the HPC Facilities are used efficiently, and to that end, providing ECMWF’s support groups and users with the tools to enable this
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  Participating in meetings with supercomputer vendors and at international technical conferences
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  From time to time, contributing to the research and evaluation of successor systems to ECMWF’s current High Performance Computing Facilities

Qualifications:

A university education, or equivalent, is required, coupled with at least five years of experience in Unix systems administration. A professional background in massively parallel processing computer systems, large-scale Linux clusters or other machines of similar architecture, in particular IBM SP clusters running AIX, would be a distinct advantage. A good knowledge of Unix shells, Perl or Python, software configuration management and operating system security is essential. Some familiarity with parallel programming using C, Fortran, MPI and/or openMP is considered beneficial.

The successful candidate should be proactive, methodical and have good analytical skills, able to demonstrate an ability to progress multiple tasks to completion and solve problems under pressure. Good written and oral communication skills are essential as is the ability to work responsibly and reliably as a member of a small team.

Staff members are normally recruited from among the nationals of the following Member and Co-operating States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.

The working languages of ECMWF are English, French and German.  Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and have a good knowledge of one of the other working languages of ECMWF.  Interviews will be conducted in English.

Remuneration:

A2: £3,795.24 to £5,069.79 basic salary per month net of tax. A3: £4,683.01 to £6,333.06 basic salary per month net of tax.

In principle, a staff member will be engaged at the lowest step of the lower grade of the post for which he or she is selected. Exceptionally, recruitment may be at a higher level when this is justified by qualifications and experience.

A deduction is made from the basic salary for the Pension Scheme and for Partial Invalidity (currently 8.8%, rising to 10.8% from 01.01.2011 for the Pension Scheme and 0.2% for Partial Invalidity). A further 1.46% of basic salary and related allowances is currently deducted for the ECMWF Supplementary Health Insurance Scheme.

Where applicable, the following allowances will be paid in addition to the basic salary: household allowance of 6% of basic salary; children’s allowance of £214.41 per child per month; expatriation allowance of 14% or 18% of basic salary for expatriates; education allowance for children of expatriates.

Starting date: As soon as possible.

Length of contract: Maximum of 4 years for initial contract, with the possibility of renewal.

Applications: Application forms in word format can be downloaded from here (162kb) and completed on-line. If you download, you may (if near to the closing date) e-mail the completed form only back to ECMWF at jobs@ecmwf.int. Please note, however, that you must still send your full application form together with all the attachments to ECMWF by post. Under no circumstances should you e-mail your attachments.

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