Staff Platform Engineer

Department

BSD CTD - Platform Engineering - PlanX

About the Department

The Center for Translational Data Science (CTDS) at the University of Chicago is a research center whose mission is to develop the discipline of translational data science to impactful problems in biology, medicine, healthcare, and the environment. We envision a world in which researchers have ready access to the data needed and the tools required to make data driven discoveries that increase our scientific knowledge and improve the quality of life. We architect ecosystems of large-scale commons of research data, computing resources, applications, tools, and services for the broader research community to use data at scale to pursue scientific inquiry and accelerate discovery. Learn more at https://gdc.cancer.gov/, https://gen3.org/, https://stats.gen3.org/, and https://ctds.uchicago.edu/.

Job Summary

The job works independently to perform a variety of activities relating to software support and/or development. Analyzes, designs, develops, debugs, and modifies computer code for end user applications, beta general releases, and production support. Guides development and implementation of applications, web pages, and user-interfaces using a variety of software applications, techniques, and tools. Solves complex problems in administration, maintenance, integration, and troubleshooting of code and application ecosystem currently in production.

Staff Platform Engineers provide production support, production monitoring, CI/CD design & implementation, & security automation across the open-source software platforms CTDS develops and operates for translational data science. Production support includes triaging, researching, communicating, and addressing production incidents. For monitoring, staff wrangle disparate system monitoring assets and develop common analytics to inform optimization, define benchmarks and confidence intervals and to forecast, proactively mitigating production incidents. CI/CD pipelines are for hybrid cloud architecture on-premises and in commercial cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

This at-will position is wholly or partially funded by contractual grant funding which is renewed under provisions set by the grantor of the contract. Employment will be contingent upon the continued receipt of these grant funds and satisfactory job performance.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for design and implementation of top priority technical tasks and timely delivery of such tasks, meeting and helping define the required level of quality.

• Participation in complex and challenging activities, including design and implementation.

• Responsible for a scope of significant size critical to the team’s success.

• Provide technical leadership and effectively mentor interns and less experienced members.

• Actively participate in the hiring process and provide fair and productive interview feedback.

• Negotiate complex decisions, present options, and persuasively advocate for optimal technical solutions, internally and externally.

• Designs new systems, features, and tools. Solves complex problems and identifies opportunities for technical improvement and performance optimization. Reviews and tests code to ensure appropriate standards are met.

• Utilizes technical knowledge of existing and emerging technologies, including public cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

• Acts as a technical consultant and resource for faculty research, teaching, and/or administrative projects.

• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

Education:

Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.

Work Experience:

Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 5-7 years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Certifications:

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Preferred Qualifications

Education:

• Advanced degree in computer science, mathematics, statistics, engineering, or a relevant quantitative field strongly preferred.

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Experience:

• 6+ years professional experience as a system or DevOps engineer or demonstrated skills and qualifications through projects, initiatives, or outstanding performance.

• Hands-on scripting experience (Bash, Python, or other dynamic language).

• Unix/Linux programming or system administration experience.

• Experience with OpenStack and AWS p(EC2/S3) cloud technologies.

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