HPC DevOps Engineer

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center at the University of Washington. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Cost Effectiveness and Efficiency; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations. Our vision is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base so all people live long lives in full health.

IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which is cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.

IHME has an outstanding opportunity for a HPC DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure. 

POSITION PURPOSE

The purpose of this position is to define, implement, and automate processes relating to the deployment of applications within IHME’s infrastructure. The HPC DevOps Engineer will support development staff as they integrate new processes into the development workflow by defining processes, architecting environments, and advocating best practices relating to application security, scalability, and reusability. Additionally, a qualified candidate will monitor the deployed applications to ensure that our products remain available to their audiences. We are looking for a highly creative and organized individual with substantial experience in systems and IT operations who thrives on building rapidly deployable, scalable, and stable computational environments.

Our HPC cluster and interactive visualizations have been featured in news outlets, journal publications, and online resources; they are also instrumental in helping policymakers around the world make informed decisions to improve people’s health and empower researchers and analysts. The IHME has an outstanding opportunity for a HPC DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure report to the Director of IT Infrastructure Dev/Ops.

The position is contingent upon project funding availability.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Process engineering

• Define and improve the automation processes for the system administration team.
• Work with HPC software engineers to ensure best implementation of tools, scripts, and programs to fully utilize our resources.
• Ensure that development processes allow for rapid deployment, rapid recovery from failures, and overall application stability.
• Understand and promote application security best practices in development processes.

Architecting and managing environments

• Manage various development, testing, and production environments for internal and public-facing data visualizations and web applications.
• Develop strategies for recovering from failures by implementing checkpoints and other methods in the HPC environment.
• Implement and maintain application infrastructure monitoring and reporting tools.
• Work with Systems Administrators to ensure stable, functional environments.
• Understand the methods and technologies used in the storage, manipulation, and display of geospatial and high-dimensional epidemiological information.

Development and maintenance of internal tools

• Develop and maintain internal tools related to the deployment of software-defined infrastructure.

Research knowledge

• Become familiar with substantive areas of expertise at IHME and their comprehensive data needs in order to perform complex multidisciplinary analyses.
• Develop an understanding of overall IHME team structure in order to more effectively manage information channels and inter-team dependencies.

General

• Stay up to date on the latest technologies surrounding application deployment and large datasets, and have a good understanding of when and where they should be implemented to benefit the Institute.
• Perform additional duties as assigned that fall within the reasonable scope of this position and the IHME team overall.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field and five years’ related experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS 

• Outstanding interpersonal skills, including team ethic and relationship building.
• Strong background in Linux/Unix administration.
• Strong software engineering and scripting experience.
• Experience with systems and IT operations.
• Experience with configuration management and automation (i.e., Salt, Ansible, Chef).
• Familiarity with Linux Containers and Virtualization (Docker/LXC, VSphere, OpenStack).
• A working understanding of code and script (Bash, Python, or Ruby).
• Experience with monitoring and metrics-gathering tools (ELK stack, Nagios, Sensu).
• Understanding of Software Development Life Cycle, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
• Experience with version control systems (Git).
• Comfortable with Agile methodologies and working closely within small teams.
• A commitment to working to alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive. See IHME’s DEI statement here: https://www.healthdata.org/about/dei.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with distributed storage systems such as Qumulo, CEPH, Stornext, etc.
• Knowledge of cluster management and scheduling systems like SGE/UGE, Torque, or Slurm.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT  

• Weekend and evening work sometimes required.
• This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US. The UW is not able to sponsor visas for staff positions.
• Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote in the US; work schedule required to overlap 50% of IHME office hours, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Time.

Committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff, the University of Washington will honor your experiences, perspectives and unique identity. Together, our community strives to create and maintain working and learning environments that are inclusive, equitable and welcoming.

The University of Washington is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.

To request disability accommodation in the application process, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 or dso@uw.edu.

Please see Benefits summary: https://hr.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/02/benefits-professional-staff-librarians-academic-contract-covered-exempt-20230921_a11y.pdf

The application process may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.

Applicants considered for this position will be required to disclose if they are the subject of any substantiated findings or current investigations related to sexual misconduct at their current employment and past employment. Disclosure is required under Washington state law.