Systems Administrator 3

The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a new multi-organizational research center comprising world-class resources and expertise located in one facility at Emeryville, California. The goal of JBEI is to use rapidly advancing scientific techniques, such as systems and synthetic biology, to accelerate development of the nation's biofuels industry. JBEI is a U.S. Department of Energy funded Bioenergy Research Center, managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with partners from 5 internationally recognized scientific institutions: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), University of California-Davis (UCD), University of California-Berkeley (UCB), and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a new multi-organizational research center comprising world-class resources and expertise located in one facility at Emeryville, California. The goal of JBEI is to use rapidly advancing scientific techniques, such as systems and synthetic biology, to accelerate development of the nation's biofuels industry. JBEI is a U.S. Department of Energy funded Bioenergy Research Center, managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with partners from 5 internationally recognized scientific institutions: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), University of California-Davis (UCD), University of California-Berkeley (UCB), and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Summary

The Joint BioEnergy Institute is seeking a Systems Administrator, to be a part of the Technology Division. The scope of this position includes managing scientific computing resources, primarily linux-based clusters and servers, making project and public data accessible in a timely manner to project participants, and integrating the data with existing data from other databases.

Duties

  • Plan, organize, prioritize and complete assigned tasks and projects in a timely manner
  • Frequently and clearly communicate task or project status to customers to either set or negotiate expectations
  • Under the broad supervision of the Vice President of Technology and the Computational Analysis Director, provide linux system administration and user support for research groups, including:
    • System installations, software installations from packages or from source code, distribution upgrades, OS and security patches, system monitoring, disk and file system management, system hardware and peripheral management, backup and recovery management, troubleshooting, and crash recovery
    • Configuring, administering, and troubleshooting various compute clusters, web and database servers, and other services and daemons
    • Participating in the formulation, planning, organizing, implementation and support of new services or capabilities. Provide basic support for linux desktop systems, including hardware and software installations and upgrades
    • Supporting a group of approximately 10 full-time programmers and computational biologists in using JBEI computational resources

Qualifications

  • At least five years linux system administration experience, with responsibility for a wide range of hardware and distributions
  • Specific areas of required experience include Apache; Python/Perl; bash/tcsh, including writing complex Bourne shell scripts; runlevel 1 for critical update or recovery purposes; remote administration, including ssh, remote serial consoles, and remote PDUs; NFS; LDAP, primarily the OpenLDAP server and clients and RAID controllers
  • Firm understanding of linux internals including the boot process, kernel versions, and recovery scenarios
  • Experience with a code management system, preferably CVS or Subversion, as both administrator and code contributor
  • Experience with relational database operation and maintenance, specifically with MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle
  • Database experience should include database design, implementation, installation, and administration, including backup and restore of large databases
  • Demonstrated ability to incorporate disparate protocols to provide services to researchers and collaborators
  • Ability to employ a flexible approach to solving software problems, and to balance independent approaches to software issues, with specifications developed by others, including project management, project researchers, and other software developers
  • Demonstrated ability to make progress on multiple tasks simultaneously, and to work both independently and as a member of a team
  • Must be available as needed nights and weekends for critical system updates that cannot be performed during regular lab hours

Notes

This is a full-time one-year Term appointment, renewable under the same conditions, contingent upon the continued availability of funding and work. For consideration apply online at: http://jobs.lbl.gov, select “Search Jobs”, and enter job number 21565 in the keyword search field. For more information about JBEI go to: www.jbei.org.