ASKUSR0147035 Site Reliability Engineer - NERSC Operations

About Essnova Solutions

At Essnova Solutions, we connect skilled people with work that matters. Our team supports federal agencies and research organizations with the technical talent they need to solve complex problems. For this role, you’ll join the team supporting NERSC, where reliable computing systems help scientists advance research in energy, physics, materials, and more.

Location: Onsite at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Schedule: Five days per week, midnight–8:00 a.m.
Contract term: Approximately one year
Pay rate: $75/hour (suggested rate, subject to confirmation)

About the role

NERSC provides high performance computing and data services to researchers across U.S. Department of Energy science programs. As part of its 24/7 Operations Technology team, you will monitor critical computing and data center systems, respond to incidents, and improve the tools that keep those systems reliable and available to scientific users.

Responsibilities

• Monitor HPC, storage, network, and facility systems during the onsite overnight shift. Triage alerts and engage on-call staff as appropriate.
• Maintain continuous operational data collection and document incidents, outages, and maintenance updates in the trouble ticketing system.
• Develop and maintain monitoring tools, alerting integrations, and software that brings HPC system API data into the monitoring pipeline.
• Automate routine responses, improve triage, and identify ways to prevent recurring incidents.
• Configure and maintain applications and tools as data and user demands grow.
• Conduct physical and logical data center walkthroughs, including checks of environmental conditions, power distribution, and cooling infrastructure.
• Coordinate with NERSC teams on incidents, maintenance activities, and operational workflows.
• Use ServiceNow to support service management workflows and customized solutions.

Requirements

Qualifications

• Experience in, or willingness to work within, a 24/7 onsite team supporting a large data center or other critical installation.
• Hands-on experience with the Linux shell and command-line tools, including SSH.
• Experience developing tools with a programming or scripting language such as C, C++, Perl, Java, or Python, along with knowledge of standard software development practices.
• Knowledge of data communications networks, network protocols, and infrastructure supporting highly available systems.
• Experience with network security, including access control lists and firewalls.
• Ability to work across technical teams to resolve operational issues and support system reliability.
• Strong communication, troubleshooting, and judgment when addressing complex incidents.

Additional experience valued

• Kubernetes, Prometheus or VictoriaMetrics, Alertmanager, building management software, evaporative cooling systems, or power utilization monitoring.
• ServiceNow implementation and IT service management practices.
• Developing or deploying agentic AI or autonomous tools for technical workflows, monitoring, or incident response.

Equal employment opportunity

Essnova Solutions, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. Essnova provides reasonable accommodation during the application and hiring process for qualified individuals with disabilities.