The School of Engineering

Stanford Engineering has been at the forefront of innovation for nearly a century, creating pivotal technologies that have transformed the worlds of information technology, communications, health care, energy, business and beyond. Our faculty and students are creative risk-takers who pursue excellence across a breadth of disciplines. Our alumni include some of the world's most successful leaders in technology and business. Our staff are critical to enabling Stanford Engineering to accomplish its mission: seeking solutions to some of the world's most urgent challenges and educating leaders who will make the world a better place through the power of engineering principles, techniques and systems. 

The Stanford Data Science Initiative. The Stanford Data Science Initiative (SDSI), founded in 2014, has worked to provide researchers with new technologies and resources. Now in its fourth year, SDSI is proud to be the foundation of Stanford University's major and expanded new efforts to develop a campus wide Data Science ecosystem. SDSI aims to make Stanford a data enabled university. The Initiative advances data science methods and tools, and weaves them into the fabric of the university, to effectively respond to our most pressing societal and scientific challenges. The initiative works to support research in a variety of fields where incredible advances are being made through the facilitation of meaningful collaborations between domain researchers, with deep expertise in societal and fundamental research challenges, and methods researchers that are developing next generation computational tools and techniques.

The System Administrator 2 will support the members of the Stanford Data Sciences Initiative (SDSI) and the Infolab research lab in the Computer Science department. The main role is to interact and consult with students, professors and research staff on a daily basis and to tune, configure, develop, and propose novel system infrastructure designs that will support and advance the lab members’ research in the area of large graph computations, scalable machine learning algorithms, information extraction pipelines, and information management.

Your responsibilities include:

• System support for large-scale processing: configuring compute clusters, tuning resource managers, supporting massively parallel job execution, optimizing kernel for CPU and GPU bound jobs, optimizing cluster network connections, support infrastructure scale-out, extending in house capabilities with cloud offerings, supporting, installing and optimizing CUDA and other co-processor technologies.
• System support for massive in-memory graphs and databases: configuring CPU core affinities, configuring IRQ affinities, supporting development of NUMA aware code, configuring fast server to server and server to storage interconnects, tuning kernel and network.
• System support for large-scale data storage: configuring storage systems, backup, supporting eventually consistent storage, configuring HA storage systems, configuring and monitoring multi-stage backup, managing real time replication with data streaming, designing petabyte storage systems.
• System performance tuning for big memory machines: optimizing kernel, building custom kernels, NUMA aware software development, in-depth resource usage tracking.
• Strategic large-scale infrastructure development: designing a petabyte storage system, designing clusters with large-scale memory nodes, designing clusters for large-scale computing, designing massively parallel data access systems, planning new compute clusters.
• System support for large-scale crawling: supporting web crawling from a large amount of parallel clients, virtualization of resources, network configuration and network rate limiting, designing intelligent crawling systems.
• Consulting with researches: daily interaction with the Infolab group’s researchers, designing novel system architecture to support experiments, optimizing system resource usage, in depth resource usage monitoring, building custom kernels, optimizing kernel experiments, building support scripts, tracking down bugs, designing multi tier distributed systems, following group members’ research, participating in research meetings, building custom software packages, solving technical issues when running complex experiments, communicating with researches about their computing needs, planning experiment runs, helping researches with the available infrastructure, advising on best practices to run experiments, resolve issues during experiment runs, monitoring of experiment execution, combining existing infrastructure in new ways to facilitate experiments. 

To be successful in this position, you will bring: 

• Bachelor's degree and five years of relevant experience, or a combination of education and relevant experience.
• Deep knowledge about Linux server configuration and performance optimization, Linux kernel configuration and Intel and GPU processors, advanced knowledge of the following desktop operating systems: Ubuntu GNU/Linux, CentOS GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, experience with configuration management and  system monitoring tools, experience with software packaging on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
• Deep understanding of Linux storage systems, especially FreeNAS and file system technologies, specifically ZFS and AFS, and experience with database technologies, database administration and database systems, specifically PostreSQL, MySQL, Hadoop and Spark frameworks and advanced knowledge about their administration, advanced knowledge about HDFS.
• Advanced knowledge about computer networks, technical and functional knowledge of system and network architecture and interrelationships, experience with 802.3ad link aggregation,  experience with 10 GbE network configuration.
• Deep understanding of virtualization technologies and proven experience with Vmware ESXi, KVM, Vmware Workstation, VirtualBox, and Docker virtualization products and advanced experience with network based services SVN and GIT version control systems, LDAP, Kerberos, DNS, and Apache.
• Ability to program in multiple programming languages on multiple operating systems, such as PHP, Perl and bash scripting languages and advanced knowledge of Python and Numpy, Scipy, NetworkX extensions.
• Excellent communication skills, clearly articulates thoughts and ideas, is diplomatic in communications, listens to ensure understanding prior to making decisions or taking action, uses professional language, uses electronic communications appropriately, extracts and communicates necessary technical information, ability to daily interact and support researchers and students in their research activities.
• Excellent problem solving skills to identify issues, problems, gathers facts and other appropriate resources needed to resolve issues, understands available options and recommends/implements solutions, has analytical approach to problem solving, experience with complex multi-system platforms and vendors.
• Demonstrated team player - develops effective working relationships at all levels and across all departments, encourages information sharing, constructive criticism and cooperation, fosters innovations through sharing of ideas, respects and supports the ideas of others, displays a willingness to mentor others.

*Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to any employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of his or her job.

Why Stanford is for You

Imagine a world without search engines or social platforms. Consider lives saved through first-ever organ transplants and research to cure illnesses. Stanford University has revolutionized the way we live and enrich the world. Supporting this mission is our diverse and dedicated 17,000 staff. We seek talent driven to impact the future of our legacy. Our culture and unique perks empower you with:

• Freedom to grow. We offer career development programs, tuition reimbursement, or audit a course. Join a TedTalk, film screening, or listen to a renowned author or global leader speak.
• A caring culture. We provide superb retirement plans, generous time-off, and family care resources.
• A healthier you. Climb our rock wall, or choose from hundreds of health or fitness classes at our world-class exercise facilities. We also provide excellent health care benefits.
• Discovery and fun. Stroll through historic sculptures, trails, and museums.
• Enviable resources. Enjoy free commuter programs, ridesharing incentives, discounts and more!

How to Apply

We invite you to apply for this position by clicking on the “Apply for Job” button. To be considered, please submit a cover letter and résumé along with your online application. Your one-page cover letter should briefly describe your background in customer service and provide examples of your experience with attention to detail, responsiveness, and decision-making. 

Additional Information

Schedule: Full-time
Job Code: 4832
Employee Status: Regular
Grade: I
Requisition ID: 83472