Program Description 

 

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) “T0-Team” is looking for a highly motivated and skilled DevOps Engineer to join our team. The Tier-0 is of highest importance to CMS and needs to process all recorded data in near-time and archive all output safely to tape. In this role, you would play a crucial part in developing, operating and evolving the data system for CMS. 

The CMS is an experiment that investigates a wide range of physics using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva Switzerland. The CMS collaboration uses a large and distributed computing infrastructure to record, process and analyze CMS data and simulation at petabyte scales. CMS Computing Operations manages these central workflows starting with processing freshly recorded data at CERN, to re-processing data and producing Monte Carlo simulations at worldwide distributed computing centers. CMS Computing Operations also maintains and manages large scale data movements between these different centers and collaborates with the admins of the 70 computing sites to maintain and sustain functional services and resources used by central workflows and physicists performing analysis of detector data and simulations. 

The first stage of the processing infrastructure of CMS is handling data just recorded by the detector. The so-called Tier-0 converts the binary data recorded by the detector into a custom file format best suited for processing and analysis, and performs the very first reconstruction pass to ready the recorded data for physics analysis. It also repacks the data into larger files suited for transfer to other GRID sites, tape storage and large-scale processing. The Tier-0 is developed with a very high degree of automation. Changing data taking conditions of the LHC and the detector make it necessary though to constantly monitor the infrastructure by experts and handle all arising issues quickly. 

Computing systems used at and between the different sites are based on Grid technologies and use sophisticated software to achieve the required high scales of transfer volumes and processing throughput. State of the art programming technologies are used for the different systems. The processing infrastructure is based on distributed state-machines that handle job submission and tracking. The data transfer system is based on a highly performant node infrastructure both centrally and at the individual computing centers. All systems use the latest database technologies, both local to the systems and distributed, both relational and NoSQL database systems. A good overview is shown in the following animation: http://cds.cern.ch/record/1541893?ln=en 

We are looking for one visiting scientist based at Fermilab, to operate the Tier-0 for CMS during the US timezone, in coordination with the team members on the European timezone . The successful candidate will be trained in all technologies used in the Tier-0, from the python based state machine to the job submission infrastructure to CERN specific storage and Cloud systems. The successful candidate will contribute to the operation of the system in close collaboration with coordinators and the data taking crew of the detector at CERN. A Tier-0 operator is monitoring the Tier-0 system, maintains its health and debugs problems together with site admins and system developers. Sometimes flexibility in the time schedule is required. This high visibility task is very important to the experiment and its success. The successful candidate will be able to work on the further optimization and automatization of the system and is expected to be able to work both within an international team, and independently to solve problems and implement solutions quickly and effectively. 

This is an opening for a term Research Intern hired through University of Wisconsin Madison (UW-Madison) and stationed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, USA. The successful candidate is required to have a Bachelor's degree in engineering, computing, mathematics or natural sciences. The stay is limited to 1 year with the possibility for an extension for a second year. 

The successful candidate is provided with: 

The University of Wisconsin is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. We promote excellence through diversity and encourage all qualified individuals to apply.