High Performance Computing Data Storage Administrator III

Pay Grade/Pay Range: Minimum: $84,200 - Midpoint: $113,700 (Salaried E13)

Department/Organization: 200706 - OIT-HPC Center Services

Normal Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm

Note to Applicants: Position is eligible for hybrid work subject to University policy.

Job Summary: The High Performance Computing Data Storage Administrator III administers and optimizes enterprise and high-performance computing (HPC) storage systems. Designs and implements storage pools, filesystems, and services. Leads storage upgrades, expansions, migrations, and technology refreshes. Deploys, configures, and maintains production parallel filesystems and resolves complex issues involving metadata, input/output, throughput, latency, capacity, and availability. Develops and maintains data lifecycle workflows supporting high-speed ingest, tiered storage, archiving, replication, backup, disaster recovery, and long-term preservation. Coordinates large-scale data movement across HPC clusters, cloud providers, national laboratories, and research collaborators. Develops automation and implements storage monitoring and security practices. Provides technical consultation to researchers and staff.

Additional Department Summary: Provides administration, operational, and technical leadership for the University's high-performance computing (HPC) storage infrastructure. Designs, implements, optimizes, and supports large-scale research storage systems that enable computational science, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data-intensive research. Partners with HPC systems administrators, network administrators, application administrators, cybersecurity staff, and researchers to ensure that storage services are reliable, scalable, secure, and optimized for high-performance computing workloads. Bridges day-to-day operations and strategic storage administration by leading implementation projects, improving automation, and optimizing storage performance. Mentors lower-level storage administrators. Builds directly on the operational and architectural responsibilities outlined in the department's storage administration framework.

Required Minimum Qualifications: High school diploma or GED and eight (8) years of systems administration or storage administration experience; OR associate's degree and six (6) years of systems administration or storage administration experience; OR bachelor's degree four (4) years of systems administration or storage administration experience; OR master's degree and two (2) years of systems administration or storage administration experience.

Additional Required Department Minimum Qualifications: Must have valid U.S. driver's license. Must be at least 19 years of age at time of hire and have an acceptable Motor Vehicle Report that is in compliance with University policies. Applicants under the age of 21 will have some driving restrictions.

Skills and Knowledge: Strong Linux systems administration skills. Demonstrated troubleshooting and analytical abilities. Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, data science, or a related computational discipline. Four (4) or more years of experience administrating enterprise Linux systems, HPC storage environments, or large-scale distributed storage platforms. Experience supporting production storage systems in a multi-user environment. Experience working in research computing IT or a scientific computing environment. Demonstrated expertise in administering one or more parallel file systems and supporting large-scale, multi-petabyte storage infrastructures. Experience supporting AI and machine learning infrastructure, as well as high-speed research networking used for large data transfers. Familiarity with cloud-based storage platforms. Experience with scripting and automation.

Background Investigation Statement: Prior to hiring, the final candidate(s) must successfully pass a pre-employment background investigation and information obtained from social media and other internet sources. A prior conviction reported as a result of the background investigation DOES NOT automatically disqualify a candidate from consideration for this position. A candidate with a prior conviction or negative behavioral red flags will receive an individualized review of the prior conviction or negative behavioral red flags before a hiring decision is made.

Equal Employment Opportunity: The University of Alabama is an Equal Employment/Equal Educational Opportunity Institution. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment or volunteer status without regard to any legally protected basis and will not be discriminated against because of their protected status. Applicants and employees of this institution are protected under Federal law from discrimination on several bases. More information is available in the EEOC’s Know Your Rights: Workplace discrimination is illegal poster.

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