Hardware Support Engineer (IT-FCS-HP-2026-191-GRAE)

Are you a skilled hardware support engineer? Does taking the responsibility of running an infrastructure dedicated to accelerating the development of cutting-edge computing technologies for the research community challenge you? Then, join the Fabric and Communication Systems (FCS) group in charge of procuring, managing, and operating the layer providing IT equipment for the CERN experiments and users community, the Data Centres and associated Computing Facilities.

Your responsibilities

As a successful candidate you will be :

• Ensuring the smooth and reliable operation of this infrastructure. You will actively take part in the commissioning of new systems, in particular the ones part of the computing cluster for the Next Generation Triggers project.
• Running hardware evaluation (including benchmarking activities) and providing support to the user community.
• Focus on the deployment and operations of systems equipped with accelerator cards such as enterprise grade GPU.
• Maintain the existing servers, ensuring optimal performance through regular maintenance and upgrades.

Additional opportunities include:

• Interact on a regular basis with industry partners and be exposed to novel technologies.
• Organise topic-oriented workshops.

Your profile

• Proven experience with computer systems (BIOS/UEFI, x86/Arm processor architectures and virtualization, memory, GPU computing), interconnects (Ethernet, Infiniband) and types of storage drives (S-ATA, SAS, NVMe).
• Experience with management and monitoring protocols such as, but not limited to, IPMI / Redfish, SMART and SNMP.
• Extensive experience with Linux and shell scripting.
• Demonstrated experience with Python.

Skills

Skills and/or knowledge:

• Server hardware.
• Python.
• Shell scripting.
• Linux system administration.

Additional assets:

• Familiarity with performance profiling and optimisation of applications.
• Demonstrating the ability to perform performance-oriented debugging.
• Proficiency (or willingness to rapidly acquire it) in utilising software configuration management tools, such as Puppet or Ansible.
• The ability to work in French would be an advantage.
• Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.

Eligibility criteria:

• By the application deadline, you have a maximum of two years of professional experience since graduation in Computer Science / Computer Engineering (or a related field) and your highest educational qualification is either a Bachelor's or Master's degree.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.
• Applicants without University degree are not eligible.
• Applicants with a PhD are not eligible.