At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization.

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) project is a global collaboration of around 170 computing centres in more than 40 countries, linking up national and international grid infrastructures. The WLCG Operations and Experiment Liaison team coordinates WLCG operations and contributes to complex tasks such as infrastructure optimization and the effective integration of the infrastructure and the computing systems of the scientific user communities. Members of the team work closely with the science users and technology experts to ensure strong collaboration between the computing experts across user communities, WLCG project and CERN IT.

Key responsibilities:

• Contribute to cross-community data challenges following the strategies defined by Data Organization, Management and Access (DOMA) project. The goal of the data challenges is to prove the effectiveness of the proposed data management solutions and to assess the expected cost reduction required to close the gap between the storage requirements expressed by LHC experiments and the storage capacity foreseen within the flat budget scenario. This work implies improvement of the monitoring infrastructure in order to provide complete and systematic assessment of the data challenges and track the actual performance against the pre-determined targets;
• Contribute to the development of the new solutions aiming to reduce WLCG operational costs and automate operational tasks, optimize utility of WLCG resources and improve science productivity.  Among ongoing projects are evolution of the Information System for the distributed infrastructure, the framework that simplifies the deployment and management of distributed services and the development of tools and services that provide operational intelligence;
• Assess the impact and costs of custom choices vs. common solutions, including their impact on the common infrastructure. Promote common approaches to the adoption of new technologies;
• Act as a liaison between the LHC experiment computing teams, the WLCG project and CERN IT. Ensure effective two-way communication, covering information about LHC computing activities, plans, priorities and needs, cross-community projects, as well as information related to WLCG operations and service evolution, reporting back to WLCG management.

Eligibility criteria

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State;
• You have a Bachelor or Master degree in Computer Science, Particle Physics, Engineering or other related field;
• You have no more than 4 years’ experience after completing your highest diploma.

Essential skills and experience

• Experience of work in the computing projects of the LHC experiments, in particular DevOps experience, will be a big asset;
• Experience in object-oriented software design in the Linux environment with Python;
• Experience with data analytic and monitoring tools (ElasticSearch, Hadoop/Spark, Kibana, Grafana);
• Design, development and deployment of web applications. Experience with the Django framework would be an asset.

Desired skills and experience

• Professional experience in one or more of the following would be an asset: virtualisation, configuration and container technologies (Openstack, Puppet, Docker, Kubernetes);
• Familiarity with HEP storage solutions (dCache, EOS, DPM, StoRM, xrootd), and data management systems (Rucio, FTS).

Please note that CERN Staff members are not eligible to apply for a Fellowship.

CERN would very much like to benefit from your expertise, commitment and passion. In return, we offer:

• An employment contract for between six months (minimum) up to a maximum of 36 months. A regular fellowship duration is 24 months.
• A stipend ranging from 5,305 to 6, 586 Swiss Francs per month (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN’s comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: an installation grant, family, child and infant allowances as well as travel expenses to and from Geneva.
• 2.5 days of paid leave per month.

Your future Life @CERN

Get a glimpse of what it’s like to work at CERN: https://careers.cern/benefits and https://careers.cern/our-people

This is how you can apply:

Please provide the following documents to complete your application:

• A CV;
• A scanned PDF of your most recent relevant qualification;

We recommend to add two recent letters of recommendation, giving an overview of your academic and/or professional achievements. You can upload these letters at the time of application if you have them to hand. You will also be provided with a link as soon as you have submitted your application to forward to your referees to upload their letters confidentially. Please note this must be done before the closing date.

All applications should reach us no later than 20 July 2021.