System & Network Administrator

Caltech is a world-renowned science and engineering institute that marshals some of the world's brightest minds and most innovative tools to address fundamental scientific questions. We thrive on finding and cultivating talented people who are passionate about what they do. Join us and be a part of the diverse Caltech community.

Job Summary

As a system administrator working at LIGO Hanford Observatory, you will help deploy, maintain, and extend critical computing infrastructure at a world-leading gravitational wave Observatory. You will have the opportunity to work on a diverse set of challenges. These include the public network and its supporting services and infrastructure, as well as a local scientific data analysis compute cluster.  

You will work in concert with other local and remote system administrators and have input on the design, selection, and implementation of projects. The infrastructure you will work with will include systems such as DNS, DHCP, LDAP, Containers, virtual machines, Kubernetes, high-throughput batch job systems, and clustered storage systems.

Your position is an enabler. You will work with users as needed and be able to see the results of your work.

LIGO is one of a handful of large-scale gravitational wave interferometers. This opportunity will give you a chance to apply your technical skills at a one-of-a-kind project in a new and growing field.

Essential Job Duties

System Administration - 35%

• Management and administration of multiple heterogeneous physical and virtual data centers.
• Communicate and coordinate with other system administrators, including reporting on progress and providing input to plans for future work.
• Provide application support for a broad range of database, business, engineering, and scientific analysis applications.
• Support and manage virtualized and container-based services.
• Support and manage automated configuration management systems, as well as enterprise backup systems at scale.
• Linux, Mac, and Windows systems administration for computer servers, workstations, laptops, and peripherals related to user support.

Maintenance and Install - 20%

• Applying system updates.
• Deploy and maintain hardware and software through lifecycle upgrades (OS, hardware).

User support - 35%

• Responding to issues on the scientific data analysis cluster.
• Responding to user issues.
  • Including network, wireless, printing, laptop, and software issues.

Other Duties - 10%

• As assigned.

Basic Qualifications

• 4-year degree in a technical field or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience with a consumer OS (Windows or macOS).
• 2+ years of experience with Linux.
• Ability to support site infrastructure (such as DNS, DHCP, NAT, LDAP).
• Familiarity with an automated configuration management system such as Puppet, Chef, Salt, or Ansible.
• Experience with end-user support, either remote or in person.
• Strong communication and systems documentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in an academic or research environment.
• Experience with the Puppet automation framework.
• Experience with deploying and managing Kubernetes.
• Experience with Proxmox virtualization.
• Experience with a clustered file system.
• Experience with HTCondor.
• 2+ years of experience administering a network.
• Experience with network infrastructure concepts such as TCP/IP, layer ⅔ routing (LAN/WAN), VLANs, subnetting, and network port management. 
• Experience with network gear from vendors such as Juniper, CISCO, Brocade, Fiberstore, Arista, or others.

Required Documents

• Resume.
• A cover letter that expresses your interest in working at LIGO Lab and summarizes your relevant experience.