ITS Research Platforms Engineer

Help power some of the most important medical research happening in Australia. We're looking for a Research Platforms Engineer to join our small, friendly team and keep WEHI's high-performance computing environment humming - the platform behind discoveries in cancer, immunology, structural biology, genomics, imaging and, increasingly, AI.

The platform you'll look after

Our HPC environment - known as Milton - is a serious bit of kit, and our researchers lean on it every day:

• Thousands of CPU cores and a fleet of GPUs running everything from CryoEM and AlphaFold to large-scale genomics and AI.
• Multi-petabyte storage across high-performance flash (VAST), managed disk filesystems (Quantum StorNext) and tape, holding billions of research files.
• A rich scientific software stack - SLURM job scheduling, hundreds of environment modules, containerised services, and friendly web access through Open OnDemand, RStudio, Jupyter and more.
• A broad portfolio of research applications and core services to keep running - from imaging and proteomics platforms to tools the labs rely on day to day - plus a large tape archive holding billions of research files.

It's a genuinely interesting environment to work in, with real scientific impact and plenty of room to bring new ideas.

What you'll actually do

• Keep the compute, storage and scheduling environment healthy, stable and continually improving.
• Work shoulder-to-shoulder with researchers to turn real scientific problems into solutions - scoping, building, tuning and supporting the tools they need.
• Roll out new technology and better ways of working, and help researchers get the most out of the platform.
• Troubleshoot the tricky stuff, get to the root cause, and put durable fixes in place - often before anyone notices there was a problem.
• Partner with vendors and the wider ITS team, and act as the researchers' advocate when it counts.

What you'll bring

We care more about what you can do than the letters after your name. The essentials:

• 3-5+ years' hands on experience with the kinds of technologies we run (or close, market available equivalents) - think Linux and HPC cluster administration, a scheduler like SLURM, enterprise or high performance storage, GPU compute, virtualisation, and scripting/automation in Bash or Python.
• Solid Linux systems administration, containers (Docker, Apptainer) and an infrastructure as code mindset (e.g. Ansible) - in short, a sysadmin/DevOps approach to keeping things reliable and repeatable.
• Strong problem solving instincts and the curiosity to keep learning as the technology evolves.
• Great communication skills and a genuine enjoyment of working with people - you can talk to a researcher and a vendor in the same afternoon and make both conversations land.

Nice to have (but not deal breakers)

• A tertiary qualification in science, IT, engineering or similar - desirable, not mandatory.
• Experience in medical research, higher education or another research intensive sector.
• Familiarity with the research data lifecycle and tools like Globus, and an appreciation for the needs of bioinformatics, genomics and imaging researchers.

Terms of Appointment

This position is an ongoing in a full time capacity. Very attractive salary packaging options are available for general living expenses, meal entertainment, novated leasing and more. 12% superannuation payable, plus up to a further 5% after the first 6 months of service via our matching superannuation scheme.

WEHI's commitment to diversity and inclusion

At WEHI we strive to foster a flexible working environment that encourages individual differences and promotes collaboration and creativity. We recognise that talent does not sit within a single identifiable group in our society and that WEHI's ability to shape contemporary scientific thinking and deliver leading professional services relies on a diversity of thought within our organisation. Our action to promote gender equality has been recognised with an Athena SWAN Bronze Award from Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) and we offer a range of support for women researchers.

Our commitment to celebrating diversity and addressing inequities is further demonstrated through our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, Gender Action Plan, Reconciliation Action Plan and our WE Pride network for LGBTQIA+ staff and students. We actively encourage applications from, people with a disability, culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse people and people with diverse genders and sexualities. Should you require support during the recruitment process due to special needs or consideration, please contact the People and Culture team.

WEHI's commitment to Indigenous employment

WEHI is working to create a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples will be engaged at the scientific frontier, making exciting discoveries and decisions about the future of health in this country, and part of a leading professional services workforce supporting the realisation of these discoveries. We are committed to creating a culturally safe workplace and offering career development and leadership opportunities to First Nations staff and students. We strongly encourage any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to apply.