USC Edu Jobs – HPC Visualization Engineer

The University of Southern California’s (USC) Information Technology Services (ITS) is seeking a talented

HPC Visualization Engineer

with an exceptional commitment to service excellence to join their team. As the HPC Visualization Engineer, you will be an integral member of the USC Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC), collaborating with diverse and talented team members to help solve multidimensional information technology problems, improve customer experience, and generate value for our campus stakeholders across a broad array of departments and constituencies.

THE TEAM

ITS has embarked on a major digital transformation initiative to continually improve services for faculty, staff, and students in support of USC’s ascent to a leading institution of higher education. The ITS vision aligns strategy, business, and services, affirms ITS cultural values, empowers cross-functional teamwork, embraces world-class best practices, and promotes innovation, excellence, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this vision, ITS is committed to providing a modern technology infrastructure that is resilient and delivers the performance necessary to meet the demands of a growing customer base. ITS offers training in the latest technologies for its highly productive and motivated workforce, outstanding customer experience, and technology services that are aligned with the university’s mission to provide exceptional learning opportunities for students. We have created a workplace where employees can develop cutting-edge skills, take pride in the services they provide, and have access to the roles and career paths that align with their abilities and potential. We are looking for top talent to join us on our journey.

ITS CULTURE

USC’s ITS organization represents a diverse and talented team, committed to supporting a collaborative culture and delivering secure and innovative IT services, core to the mission of USC. ITS values accountability, excellence, and commitment to exceptional customer experience. ITS strives for a supportive and inclusive culture that encourages employees to do their best work every day and where individuals are recognized and celebrated for their contributions.

About Usc

USC is the leading private research university in Los Angeles—a global center for arts, technology, and international business. With more than 47,500 students, we are located primarily in Los Angeles but also in various US and global satellite locations. As the largest private employer in Los Angeles, responsible for $8 billion annually in economic activity in the region, we offer the opportunity to work in a dynamic and diverse environment, in careers that span a broad spectrum of talents and skills across a variety of academic and professional schools and administrative units. As a USC employee and member of the Trojan Family—the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who make USC a great place to work—you will enjoy excellent benefits, including a variety of well-being programs designed to help individuals achieve work-life balance.

Come join the ITS team and work as a trusted partner in shaping an environment of innovation and excellence for the university.

Minimum Qualifications

The candidate for the position of

HPC Visualization Engineer

must meet the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, informatics, or other science and engineering disciplines, or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• Two years of experience in one of the following fields: information technology, computational science and engineering, or scientific visualization in an HPC environment.
• Exposure to data- and computation-intensive research workflows.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the research process, proposal lifecycle, data lifecycle, and workflows.
• Experience in large-scale visualization of complex systems and big data from scientific research.
• Expert level knowledge and experiences in using parallel visualization software such as ParaView, VizIt, Matlab Visualization Toolbox, and/or Tecplot.
• Experience in programming with VTK, OpenCL, OpenGL, and/or CUDA.
• Extensive experience in programming with Python, JavaScript ES6+, D3, HTML5, and CSS3and/or similar tools and frameworks.
• Experience in the development of web-based front-end applications.
• Experience using software methodologies to execute process design, software design, installation, implementation, modification, and compilation for use in a high-performance computing environment.
• Demonstrated experience conducting research in a higher education environment.
• Experience providing technical support for research projects.
• Strong understanding of high-performance computing topics, as well as the data visualization efforts involved in HPC.
• Proven ability to successfully manage and prioritize multiple projects and plans, implement project specifications, report project status, identify delays, and raise concerns.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, including demonstrated ability to interact credibly with a variety of stakeholders, including researchers, IT staff, IT leadership, and university administrators.
• Awareness of compliance regulations surrounding research data, including federal requirements and granting agency standards.
• Ability to translate scientific research needs into technical computing solutions and help researchers conduct their project in a computationally effective way.
• Ability to develop positive working relationships and a strong rapport with team members.

Preferred Qualifications

The ideal candidate for the position of

HPC Visualization Engineer

has the following qualifications:

• Advanced degree in computer science, informatics, or other science and engineering disciplines.
• Proficient in Linux and programming skills (Bash, Perl, Python, etc.).
• Expertise in SQL and other database programming.
• Experience in scientific data visualization research.
• Experience in VR/AR programming.

THE WORK YOU WILL DO

The

HPC Visualization Engineer

provides direct outreach and support services for the USC research faculty, staff, graduate students, and academic programs across all university campuses. The HPC Visualization Engineer provides technical support for new and ongoing research projects and academic endeavors related to high-performance computing and data visualization across all university campuses.

Job Accountabilities

The HPC Visualization Engineer

• Develops testing procedures and production documentation to contribute to the development and engagement of advanced research computing initiatives and projects on premise and in the cloud.
• Interfaces with researchers to assess, identify, and determine computational requirements that supports them in scientific data visualization.
• Proposes, creates, and iterates data visualization for diverse formats – from dynamic views on public websites to graphics for scientific publication and beyond.
• Works closely with the Center for Advanced Research Computing’s (CARC) Research Facilitation team and Cloud DevOps team for supporting scientific research at USC.
• Investigates, debugs, and addresses researcher inquiries efficiently using the customer issue ticketing system. Presents complex technical concepts in a simple and straightforward manner.
• Develops, maintains, and presents training and education efforts for researchers and academic programs to enable the optimal use of CARC resources. Teach training workshops, and occasionally develop or update the curriculum.
• Supports CARC’s collaborative efforts at the institutional, regional, and national level to identify and promote research and development opportunities for the university, ITS, and CARC in support of the University’s strategic plan for research.
• Develops a thorough knowledge of the scientific visualization and programming efforts required to support research initiatives.
• Contributes to an inclusive environment that values differences by building and maintaining collaborative relationships with team members, peers, and ITS leaders. Actively embodies ITS values and behaviors, including accountability, ethics, and best-in-class customer service. Contributes to a culture of trust and transparency by sharing information broadly, openly, and deliberately.
• Supports the vision for CARC by working closely with team members and management to implement and support effective solutions for the research community. Remains current with technology, standards, and best practices. Supports process improvement efforts within the team and across ITS.
• Performs other related duties as assigned or requested. The University reserves the right to add or change duties at any time.

The annual base salary range for this position is $107,032.37 – $120,000.00. When extending an offer of employment, the University of Southern California considers factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the candidate’s work experience, education/training, key skills, internal peer equity, federal, state, and local laws, contractual stipulations, grant funding, as well as external market and organizational considerations.

Minimum Education: Bachelor’s degree Combined experience/education as substitute for minimum education Minimum Experience: 2 years Minimum Skills: Familiarity with low-latency/high-bandwidth, interconnected infrastructure (e.g., Infiniband, Myrinet, 10GigE). Expertise with HPC system software cluster management tools, job schedulers, and other HPC tools including slurm, salt, xcat, and more. Proficiency with fundamental programming skills (e.g., Bash, PERL, Python, similar languages). Expertise with administration, monitoring, and maintaining secure Linux/Unix operating systems (CentOS, Solaris). Knowledge of HPC storage (FC, SAS) principles, file systems (e.g., samfs/qfs, beegfs, zfs) and computer node storage (NFS). Familiarity with shared and distributed memory parallelism (OpenMP, MPI), and accelerators (GPUs). Excellent written and oral communication skills, and the ability to establish strong, positive working relationships and rapport with diverse groups of team members. Ability to drive technical leadership and management of complex, large-scale computing system projects. Proficiency with multi-vendor management, security and network/Internet protocols. Demonstrated expertise in design configuration and planning, with excellent organization skills, and the ability to identify and resolve problems and manage performance. Excellent written and oral communication skills, with experience presenting technical topics to non-technical audiences. Ability to establish processes for maintaining system performance and managing best-in-class standards. Preferred Education: Bachelor’s degree Computer Science Or Bachelor’s degree Computer Information Systems Or Bachelor’s degree Information System Management – Network Management Or Bachelor’s degree in related field(s) Preferred Experience: 4 years Preferred Skills: Experience in high-performance computing and system administration. Familiarity with cloud computing and container technologies.