Requisition Number:
74153 Employment Type:
University Staff Posting Close Date:
24-Aug-2026
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Job Summary
The
Office of Information Technology at CU Boulder encourages applications for a
Research Computing Storage Administrator! This role supports the PetaLibrary research data storage service and the storage components of CURC's HPC and condo compute clusters. That currently means Alpine and Blanca, including the high-performance parallel scratch filesystem shared across those systems (/scratch/alpine, backed by GPFS). This position works in collaboration with other administrators on the Research Computing team and receives technical guidance from senior storage staff.
The position contributes to the reliability, performance, and recoverability of research data at petabyte scale. As federal requirements applicable to research data continue to develop, this position supports storage-side compliance activity, including evidence collection, access review, and configuration records. CU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. We are committed to creating a workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity, and we encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.
Who We Are
Vision
- The Office of Information Technology will be valued by campus as a strategic, inclusive and innovative partner in advancing learning and discovery in order to enable CU Boulder to be a premier public university.
Mission
- The Office of Information Technology enables campus priorities by providing high-value IT services and solutions.
Values
- Trust, as a foundation for how we engage with one another and with campus partners, along with
- Avid curiosity in how to better support the campus and our stakeholder's while
- Fostering empowerment and authentic engagement amongst ourselves and
- Celebrating inclusivity that promotes a sense of belonging while acknowledging that each person is unique and valued.
Strategy OIT will advance learning and discovery by delivering high-value reliable IT services and solutions that:
- Provide a fluid and adaptable academic and student experience
- Enable research competitiveness and
- Deliver core infrastructure and enterprise IT services for business effectiveness.
What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be
- Monitor storage infrastructure utilization and system metrics to anticipate and address failures within redundancy limits. Build and maintain the automation behind that monitoring and alerting, including metrics collection, thresholds, and escalation paths.
- Participate in the implementation of storage expansion, upgrades, and other front-end and back-end improvements across PetaLibrary, the parallel scratch filesystem, and cluster-attached storage. Works from designs and requirements set with senior staff.
- Test and tune storage and data-transfer systems to increase performance and reliability, with support from senior staff on fabric-level and parallel filesystem tuning.
- Maintain and/or document in support of the research computing infrastructure, particularly with regard to storage and data transfer systems, including both internal and user-facing documentation.
- Administer storage accounts and allocations, including provisioning, quota management, and external account coordination.
- Work on disaster recovery and archive testing, and support storage-side compliance activity including evidence collection, access review, and configuration records for federal requirements applicable to research data.
What You Should Know
- This position is in a hybrid work situation with Tuesdays on site and trips to campus as needed to work on hardware in data centers or to attend required meetings.
- Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
- The position carries a general expectation to respond to critical issues and incidents arising outside normal business hours within a reasonable time frame, as defined by the position's supervisor. This expectation supports commitments Research Computing has made that many of its services will have best-effort coverage outside regular business hours. Independent participation in that rotation is expected within approximately six to twelve months rather than at hire.
What We Can Offer
- The annual salary range is $70,900 - $77,980
Benefits
At the University of Colorado Boulder, we are committed to supporting the holistic health and well-being of our employees. Our comprehensive benefits package includes medical, dental, and retirement plans; generous paid time off; tuition assistance for you and your dependents; and an ECO Pass for local transit. As one of Boulder County's largest employers, CU Boulder offers an inspiring academic community and access to world-class outdoor recreation. Explore additional perks and programs through the CU Advantage program.
Be Statements
Be collaborative. Be groundbreaking. Be Boulder.
What We Require
- Bachelor's Degree in science, engineering, or other related field. A combination of education and relevant experience as described below may be substituted for the degree on a year for year basis
- 2 years of professional experience administering storage systems in a Linux or Unix Environment (NFS, SMB, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux preferred) including one year combined experience with any of the following:
- ZFS in any Unix environment (e.g., Solaris, BSD, or Linux)
- Parallel file systems (e.g., GPFS, Lustre, or BeeGFS)
What You Will Need
- Ability to work in a many-user networked Linux or Unix environment, including a mixture of unprivileged and privileged access.
- Ability to work effectively both within a team and independently, as circumstances warrant.
- Ability to follow through on commitments in a timely and professional manner.
- Ability to work from a set of requirements to implement a solution.
- Ability to work within documented change control and to produce an auditable record of configuration changes.
- Willingness to develop depth in parallel filesystem administration and to participate in a shared after-hours response expectation as that depth develops.
What We Would Like You to Have
- Experience with parallel filesystems beyond basic administration (e.g., Lustre, GPFS, BeeGFS).
- Experience with hierarchical / tiered storage systems.
- Experience with hardware and/or software RAID.
- Experience with network file systems and data transfer systems (e.g., NFS, SMB, Globus/GridFTP).
- Experience monitoring and tuning TCP/IP networks.
- Experience administering or tuning a high-speed fabric (InfiniBand or high-speed Ethernet) in a storage or HPC context.
- Experience planning or performing disaster recovery and archive restoration tests.
- Experience with systems monitoring tools and processes, including metrics and alerting.
- Experience with one or more configuration management systems (Puppet or Ansible preferred).
- Experience with revision control systems (git preferred).
- Experience with cloud storage platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
- Experience with data management systems (e.g., iRODS).
- Experience providing end-user support using a ticket tracking system.
- Experience with clustered system services (e.g., corosync, pacemaker).
- Familiarity with federal compliance frameworks in research or HPC setting.
Special Instructions
To apply, please submit the following materials:
2. A cover letter that specifically tells us how your background and experience align with the requirements, qualifications, and responsibilities of the position.
We may request references at a later time.
Please apply by
August 24, 2026 for consideration.
Note: Application materials will not be accepted via email. For consideration, please apply through CU Boulder Jobs.
In compliance with the Colorado Job Application Fairness Act, in any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.
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CU Boulder
$70900.00-$77980.00
paid time off, tuition assistance
Aug 11, 2026