Technical Support Engineer

Department

Globus Support & QA

About the Department

Globus (www.globus.org) is a mission-driven organization dedicated to enabling discovery by delivering advanced data management and computation capabilities to researchers worldwide. As a unit within The University of Chicago, Globus develops and operates commercial-quality, software-as-a-service used by thousands of institutions, including research universities, national laboratories, federal agencies, and commercial research organizations. Core features are free for non-profit researchers, and the Globus service is sustained through institutional subscriptions that unlock advanced features for organizations needing greater control, compliance support, and deeper integration with their research computing environment. This model reflects the organization’s core commitment: making secure, reliable cyberinfrastructure services accessible to the broadest possible research community. The Globus team comprises professional software developers and business operations staff, as well Globus Labs, a dedicated research group pioneering novel methods and technologies. Team members are geographically distributed—a structure that reflects the global nature of the research communities we serve—while maintaining a collaborative culture focused on making an impact in disciplines ranging from the life sciences and astronomy to materials science and public policy. If you enjoy collaborative, innovative, mission-driven environments, Globus could be a great fit for you!

Job Summary

We are looking for a skilled Technical Support Engineer who can effectively resolve multiple concurrent support requests and is adept both at independent and at collaborative problem solving. This role serves researchers, systems engineers, network engineers, and research software engineers who rely on Globus for secure, high-performance data movement, data sharing, and computing in support of scientific discovery.

You will provide second-tier technical support for users of Globus software to ensure organizations and their researchers can successfully deploy and use Globus services. You will support researchers who wish to use Globus software and services to solve their data management challenges, and you will support research IT professionals who wish to deploy Globus software and services for their user base of researchers. You must bring a genuine customer-service orientation to working with researchers and IT staff, who may have varying levels of technical sophistication. Our user support team is known for providing excellent customer support, and you will be expected to uphold that reputation by providing best in class customer service.

You are expected to become familiar with the inner workings of the Globus services and be able to 'dig deep' into the technical details to identify and solve user problems expeditiously. You will perform timely and thorough software release testing, and generate user support documentation that is clear, accurate, and comprehensive. You will also develop and execute policies and procedures that increase the efficiency and quality of Globus user support.

The ideal candidate combines strong Linux systems administration expertise with networking, storage, and high-performance computing (HPC) knowledge. Clear demonstration of a motivation and ability to help people solve technical problems is a must. Experience in an academic or research computing environment, along with Python and REST API development experience, is highly valued.

Responsibilities

• Provide Level-2 user support for installing, configuring, using, and troubleshooting Globus software and services.

• Conduct in depth analyses of technical information in order to diagnose and resolve complex technical issues.

• Proactively gather and coordinate information across software engineers in the service of resolving complex Level-2 customer issues.

• Appropriately escalate issues to Tier 3 engineering with full diagnostic context.

• Write and communicate clear, reproducible bug reports. 

• Develop policies and procedures for using internal ticketing systems for effective issue management, communication, and resolution and ensure these policies and processes are followed across teams.

• Author and maintain public-facing user documentation (e.g. user guides, FAQs, troubleshooting pages).

• Collaborate with engineering teams to develop software release testing policies and procedures.

• Test Globus product releases before release to end-users.

• Act as a technical consultant and resource for other team members and users of the Gl