Student Assistant II - High Performance Computing

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

About The Position

The Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) is seeking a motivated Student Assistant to join the CIRRUS platform team. CIRRUS is a modern, cloud-native, Kubernetes-based scientific computing platform spanning bare-metal clusters at the Boulder and Cheyenne facilities. Working alongside systems engineers and scientific researchers, the student assistant will help ensure platform reliability, improve documentation, and onboard scientific workloads. The role is structured for professional growth: initially, the assistant will verify workflows and improve documentation usability, then gradually gain hands-on experience in cloud-native platform operations and high-performance computing infrastructure under senior staff supervision. This is a one-year term role, with the possibility of extension for an additional year. The employee must maintain student status for the entire appointment and may not work more than 1,000 hours in any 12-month period. The updated hourly rate is $23.81. The position is not visa sponsored and is not eligible for relocation assistance.

Requirements

Must be enrolled for credit in an accredited secondary or post-secondary school, college, university, or qualifying trade school, and intend to enroll in the next regular session.
Must maintain student status for the entire duration of the appointment.
Basic familiarity with Linux and containers such as Docker or Podman, acquired through coursework, personal projects, or prior work.
Ability to work with a team and communicate technical concepts to engineers and platform users.
Good oral and written communication skills and aptitude for clear technical writing and documentation.
Ability to follow moderately complex procedures and practices.

Nice To Haves

Experience with at least one scripting language, such as Python or Bash.
Interest in Kubernetes.
Familiarity with Git and version control.
Familiarity with scientific or high-performance computing environments.

Responsibilities

Test and verify platform workflows, new functionality, and supporting documentation before release.
Review documentation as an end user for accuracy, completeness, and clarity, and provide written feedback and recommendations for improvement.
Validate that documented procedures produce the expected results in the Kubernetes-based CIRRUS environment.
Develop and maintain reusable, repeatable workflows for validating new workloads onboarded to the platform.
Modify and run existing workflows, scripts, and manifests, and propose improvements to validation processes.
Document workflows so team members and platform users can reuse them.
Author, edit, and improve CIRRUS documentation, including user-facing guides and onboarding materials for scientific and HPC-background users.
Write technical documentation and potentially help produce technical reports, walkthroughs, or presentations about platform functionality.
Develop knowledge of the CIRRUS platform and atmospheric and Earth system science workloads.
Gain experience with platform operations under the supervision of senior staff.
Perform additional tasks as assigned.