Student Assistant II - CIRRUS

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)•Boulder, CO

22h•$46,675 - $48,738•Hybrid

About The Position

This position works with the CIRRUS platform team within the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) to support the team’s mission to deploy, operate, and maintain CIRRUS, a cloud native, Kubernetes based scientific computing platform spanning multiple bare-metal clusters at the Mesa Lab (Boulder) and the NCAR Wyoming Supercomputing Center (Cheyenne). While specific tasks and level of complexity will depend on the skill set of the incumbent, the primary focus areas are: • Collaborate with the CIRRUS platform team and the scientific researchers who use the platform. • Verify and validate platform workflows, new functionality, and supporting documentation prior to release. • Improve the clarity, accuracy, and usability of CIRRUS documentation for an audience of scientific and HPC-background users. • Develop reusable, repeatable workflows that validate new workloads onboarded to the platform. This position requires a working understanding of Kubernetes and familiarity with cloud native tooling. The incumbent will work alongside more experienced teammates and will not perform platform administration tasks initially; the early focus is on workflow verification and documentation quality.

Requirements

Must be enrolled (or intend to enroll in the next regular session) for credit in an accredited secondary or post-secondary school, college or university, or in a trade school that has received a Certificate or Approval from the Colorado State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education.
Knowledge of and proficiency with Kubernetes and container-based workloads.
Ability to work with a team and convey technical concepts to engineers and platform users.
Good oral and written communication skills, with an aptitude for clear technical writing and documentation.
Ability to follow moderately complex procedures/practices.

Nice To Haves

Experience with at least one GNU/Linux distribution.
Experience with at least one scripting language such as Python or Bash.
Familiarity with GitOps tooling and CI/CD (e.g., Git, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Helm, Kustomize).
Familiarity with containerization and image building (e.g., Docker).
Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana).
Familiarity with public cloud and cloud-native software development practices
Familiarity with scientific or high-performance computing environments.

Responsibilities

Tests and verifies platform workflows, new functionality, and supporting documentation prior to release. Works through documentation as an end user would to confirm it is accurate, complete, and easy to understand, and provides written feedback and recommendations for improvement. Validates that documented procedures produce the expected results on the Kubernetes-based CIRRUS environment.
Develops and maintains reusable, repeatable workflows that validate new workloads onboarded to the platform. Modifies and runs existing workflows, scripts, and manifests, and proposes improvements to the validation process. Documents these workflows so other team members and platform users can reuse them.
Authors, edits, and improves CIRRUS documentation, including user-facing guides and onboarding material, for an audience of scientific and HPC-background users. Composes clear technical writing and may assist in producing technical reports, walkthroughs, or presentations on platform functionality.
Develops knowledge and understanding of the CIRRUS platform atmospheric and Earth system science workloads. Gains experience with platform operations under the supervision of senior staff. Additional tasks may be assigned from time to time.
Works under the supervision of senior staff with a moderate degree of independence in organizing assigned work. Recognizes and proposes solutions to moderately complex problems encountered during workflow verification and documentation testing. Possesses the ability to evaluate whether documented procedures and platform workflows function as intended and to provide clear oral and written recommendations to the team.