Scientific Networking Research Associate

Essential Job Duties

• System management duties for the SDN computing clusters at Caltech. This includes: Hardware installation, OS installation, software installation and updates, monitoring, security set up, and troubleshooting.
• Maintaining SDN Kubernetes cluster with storage at Caltech.
• Implement and test networking protocols, automation tools and simulation environments.
• OS installation, software installation and updates, monitoring, security set up, and troubleshooting.
• Participate (usually by videoconference) in biweekly CMS computing meetings where the status of the Caltech CMS Tier2 computing resources are discussed.
• Work with members of the HEP group and keep abreast of emerging computing, networking, storage technologies and evaluate their suitability for the computing clusters.
• Participate in the ongoing development of a next generation system that interfaces intelligent networks to the data management systems of CMS and the other LHC experiments, in order to meet the experiments’ rising needs while also accommodating the network traffic of other programs and the worldwide academic and research community.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science degree with related work experience.
• Solid understanding of TCP/IP, OSI layers and networking protocols and networking fundamentals.
• Knowledge and hands on experience in computer networking, including switches and routers, routing and switching protocols, including BGP and OSPF., network interfaces and distributed system and network.
• Analyze network performance, identify bottlenecks, and develop solutions for scalability and resilience which includes working knowledge of tools like iperf3, tcpdump, Wireshark, netcat and perfSONARKnowledge and hands-on experience with open-source projects.
• Experience in Unix/Linux operating systems and hands-on experience with operating, monitoring, and managing large-scale computing, networking, and storage infrastructures.
• Sound knowledge on GitHub/GitLab.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills including developing, writing, and reviewing technical documents.
• Excellent team player, ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Able to work on multiple tasks simultaneously and set priorities.
• Able to work across institutions and communicate effectively with both operational and research teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree with at least 2 years of work experience.
• Operational experience of production network operations.
• Ability to learn any network operating system including but not limited to Arista, Dell, Cisco, P4, and Sonic, and to adapt to new network tools, methods and devices as needed.
• Experience with management and automation tools such as Ansible, Proxmox etc.
• Knowledge on virtualization such as network, storage.
• Solid knowledge and hands-on experience on software-defined networking (SDN).
• Knowledge and experience with container networking as Kubernetes and Docker.
• Hands-on experience with network monitoring systems (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus), packet analysis, and performance tuning.
• Proficiency in shell scripting and Python.
• Familiarity with R&D networking environments and wide-area performance challenges.