Research Computing Technical Specialist

 

Position Title:

Research Computing Technical Specialist

Department/School:

Infrastructure, Information Technology

Salary/Pay Rate:

$80,000 - $90,000

Job Summary:

The Research Computing Technical Specialist is a member of the Infrastructure Team within Marist Information Technology. This position serves as a technical resource for faculty, students, and staff utilizing institutional research computing services and technologies. The specialist collaborates with researchers to understand project objectives, computational requirements, and data-intensive workflows, while supporting the effective use of advanced computing, artificial intelligence, data science, and cloud technologies. This position is designed as a growth-oriented technical role, providing opportunities to develop expertise in research computing, artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, and high-performance computing environments.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field
• 1–3 years of related experience
• Adaptability while working in a rapidly changing technological environment

Essential Functions:

• Research Engagement and Technical Consultation: Serve as a technical resource for faculty, students, and staff utilizing research computing services and technologies. Collaborate with researchers to understand project objectives, computational requirements, data-intensive workflows, and emerging technology needs. Develop proficiency in advising researchers on the effective use of advanced computing, artificial intelligence, data science, and cloud technologies to support research activities.
• Administration and Operations: Partner with IT teams to administer, configure, monitor, and maintain research computing environments, including IBM zSystems, Linux-based servers, GPU and accelerator resources, cloud-based services, virtualized infrastructure, storage systems, and container platforms. Gain experience in installing, maintaining, and upgrading research software, libraries, middleware, and related tools. Assist with routine maintenance, patching, upgrades, performance monitoring, troubleshooting, and incident response activities to ensure reliable and secure operation of research computing services.
• Research Application Support and Performance Optimization: Support AI and other computational research applications by configuring and maintaining software environments and development tools. Develop proficiency in adapting, compiling, and optimizing applications, scripts, and programming environments to ensure compatibility with platform-specific architectures, libraries, and accelerator technologies. Assist researchers with workflow optimization, resource utilization, benchmarking, performance tuning, and efficient use of shared computing resources.
• Resource Planning and Lifecycle Management: Assist in the lifecycle management of research computing infrastructure, including technology evaluation, deployment, capacity monitoring, utilization analysis, refresh planning, and retirement of computing resources. Support workload scheduling, resource allocation, and fair-use practices that enable effective use of shared computing resources. Contribute technical input regarding future research computing capabilities and service improvements.
• Training, Documentation, and Outreach: Create and maintain technical documentation, knowledge resources, user guides, and standardized workflows that promote reproducible research and efficient onboarding. Deliver workshops, training sessions, and outreach activities that increase awareness and effective use of research computing services. Continuously develop technical competency in emerging technologies relevant to the research portfolio of Marist.
• Data Stewardship and Compliance: Collaborate with researchers, IT staff, and other stakeholders to support the secure and compliant use of research computing resources. Assist with data access, governance, security, and compliance practices consistent with institutional policies, regulatory requirements, grant obligations, IRB protocols, and data use agreements. Support computational resource planning and provide technical information for grant applications, research proposals and sponsored projects.
• Other duties as assigned.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in Linux-based systems administration or research computing infrastructure
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to faculty, researchers, students, a