Research Aide - LCF - Hagy, Charles - 3.24.26.

Argonne National Laboratory•Lemont, IL

6d•$25 - $34

About The Position

During this 12-week summer internship, the student designed and implemented a Kafka monitoring web application that provides comprehensive, near real-time visibility into the health, performance, and behavior of the ALCF Kafka ecosystem, including both Kafka brokers and MirrorMaker deployments. The application was developed to track and visualize data flows originating from multiple production systems and ingest pipelines into the central Kafka cluster, offering operators and developers clear insight into end-to-end message movement and system utilization. The web application aggregates and presents key operational metrics such as topic throughput, producer and consumer activity, replication and lag behavior, and MirrorMaker synchronization status. By correlating data across upstream sources and downstream consumers, the tool enables rapid identification of bottlenecks, dropped messages, or abnormal traffic patterns that could impact the reliability of ALCF’s operational data pipelines. A core objective of the project was to improve observability for data streams that are critical to ALCF metrics and telemetry collection, which underpin system monitoring, accounting, and performance analysis for leadership-class computing resources. The student worked closely with production Kafka deployments to ensure the application reflected real operational requirements, emphasizing reliability, scalability, and clarity of visualization. Education and Experience Requirements The entirety of the appointment must be conducted within the United States. Applicants must be: o Currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate studies at an accredited institution. o Graduated from an accredited institution within the past 3 months; or o Actively enrolled in a graduate program at an accredited institution. Must be 18 years or older at the time the appointment begins. Must possess a cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. If accepting an offer, candidates may be required to complete pre-employment drug testing based on appointment length. All students remain subject to applicable drug testing policies. Must complete a satisfactory background check.

Requirements

The entirety of the appointment must be conducted within the United States.
Currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate studies at an accredited institution.
Graduated from an accredited institution within the past 3 months; or
Actively enrolled in a graduate program at an accredited institution.
Must be 18 years or older at the time the appointment begins.
Must possess a cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
If accepting an offer, candidates may be required to complete pre-employment drug testing based on appointment length. All students remain subject to applicable drug testing policies.
Must complete a satisfactory background check.