Systems Administrator

UC Santa Cruz/ Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering/ UCSC Center for Genomic Sciences/ Baskin School of Engineering

UCSC Job Title: Programmer/Analyst 3 (7275; Grade L)

You must apply online at http://jobs.ucsc.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=62230
(job number 0600651)

The UCSC Center for Genomic Sciences, part of the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering (CBSE; http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu), builds databases and develops software for the UCSC Genome Browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu). The Genome Browser facilitates genome analysis and comparison within and across multiple species. It is used by thousands of scientists and biomedical researchers worldwide. The Genome Browser and related bioinformatics research at UCSC requires large-scale computing capabilities. We seek a systems administrator to work with the CBSE systems administration team.

Summary of Duties: Under general direction and together with the center technical staff, assess, specify, and maintain the computing resources of the center.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
• CBSE cluster and server administration: maintain center servers on a regular and emergency basis; assist users in tasks such as account creation, backups, and monitoring cluster use; monitor systems for operation and capacity overload; order new equipment as specified by project requirements; offer critical input on selection of computing solutions.
• Project planning and implementation: apply operating system/systems engineering expertise in the planning, analysis, design and implementation of the CBSE computer systems and services. Assist facilities engineering by recommending modifications, including upgrades, additions or deletions to machine rooms that will house our future clusters. Provide analysis and justification for recommendations, which may include operational data, feasibility, technological motivations, customer demand or need. Provide information about our technical needs and decisions in simple terms for use in grant proposals and reports to a non-technical audience.
• Network administration: deploy, maintain, and monitor the network switches and routers used in the CBSE machine rooms. Troubleshoot network congestion when it occurs.
• Production data release processing: assist the Quality Assurance group of the Genome Browser web site in migrating requested data from development environment to production environment in a reproducible and controlled manner. The current “push” system releases software to the production web site, and the process would be a primary duty of this position.
• Desktop and help desk support: provide user desktop assistance for systems in the CBSE and problem resolution with School of Engineering and campus-wide Information Technology Services technical staff. Many such duties overlap with other technical staff support areas, but often CBSE needs are specific enough to require a custom solution.

QUALIFICATIONS (with or without accommodation):
• BS in Computer Science or Computer Engineering or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Several years experience working in systems administration or a closely related field
• Extensive experience with UNIX/Linux/FreeBSD systems administration, including installation, upgrades, and maintenance
• Experience working with Linux/FreeBSD servers, including setting up servers for NFS, DHCP, DNS, LDAP
• Experience setting up and working with Linux clusters
• Extensive experience writing and troubleshooting Perl and shell scripts
• Experience and ability to investigate and troubleshoot problems
• Strong verbal communication skills
• Ability to work well in a team environment and to interact and communicate effectively with a wide range of people
• Ability to independently learn and absorb new technical and procedural information from a wide variety of sources, much of which is done independently without formal training
• Ability to disseminate technical and procedural information to end-users of varying computing skills

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience with automated installation and administration tools like kickstart, yum and cfengine
• Experience working with Apple Xserve, Xserve RAID and Xsan
• Knowledge of Cisco IOS and the ability to do some limited network administration of Cisco and HP switches and routers
• Experience with Apache web servers
• Experience working with freeBSD, windows, OS/X
• Experience working with large RAID storage solutions
• Experience working with expect
• Experience working with MySQL
• Experience with remote monitoring software like Big Brother/Big Sister, Ganglia, Nagios, etc.
• Knowledge of bioinformatics methods and applications

Special Conditions of Employment:
• Must be willing to be on emergency call duty at least one week and weekend per month