Reliability Engineer for Forecast Delivery

Your role

We are in search of a highly motivated analyst to work in the newly formed Application Delivery section at ECMWF. In this role, you will support ECMWF’s critical operational production systems, in particular data acquisition and observation pre-processing, and weather product generation and delivery. Much of the work involves analysis of events which arise in the systems and working with developers and infrastructure teams to implement improvements to system observability, quality, and reliability.

About the section/team

The role sits in the Forecast Delivery Team, within the Application Delivery Section of our Computing Department. The Section provides platforms and services that enable ECMWF teams to consume computing resources at different levels (PaaS, SaaS) and to consistently deploy applications with different levels of support to a high degree of quality and reliability.

The Section achieves this through innovation in the areas of computer systems administration automation, application deployment and operation, reliability engineering, identity and access management, container orchestration, observability (monitoring, logging, and tracing), and PaaS/SaaS application development.

About ECMWF

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is a world-leader in weather and environmental forecasting. As an international organisation we serve our members and the wider community with global weather predictions and data that is critical for understanding and solving the climate crisis. We function as a 24/7 research and operational centre with a focus on medium and long-range predictions, holding one of the largest meteorological data archives in the world. The success of our activities builds on the talent of our scientists and experts, strong partnerships with 35 Member and Co-operating States and the international community, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and the use of innovative technologies and machine learning across our operations. ECMWF is a multi-site organisation, with a main office in Reading, UK, a data centre/supercomputer in Bologna, Italy, and a large presence in Bonn, Germany.  

ECMWF has also developed a strong partnership with the European Union and has been entrusted with the implementation and operation of the Destination Earth Initiative and the Climate Change and Atmosphere Monitoring Services of the Copernicus Programme. Other areas of work include High Performance Computing (HPC) and the development of digital tools that enable ECMWF to extend provision of data and products covering weather, climate, air quality, fire and flood prediction and monitoring. 

For additional detail about ECMWF, see www.ecmwf.int 

Main duties and key responsibilities

• Supporting the ECMWF critical operational forecast production systems, in particular:
• data acquisition and observation pre-processing
• product generation, dissemination and archiving
• Automation of the deployment of software to containers, VMs, or bare metal
• Developing observability capabilities for services and their underlying systems
• Advising on quality assurance for new contributions and changes to critical operational systems
• Advising on and testing new developments targeted for operational implementation
• Contributing to documentation and training, including cross-training within the team
• Advocating for reliability engineering within ECMWF and its partners
• Participating in regular 24-hour on-call rotas for any critical systems and services in the relevant areas
• Any other relevant domains related to the team’s portfolio
  
  

What we're looking for

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with a co-operative nature
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proactive continuous improvement approach
• Self-motivated, and able to work with minimal supervision
• Dedication and enthusiasm to work in a geographically distributed team 
• Ability to work efficiently and complete diverse tasks in a timely manner

Education

• A university degree (EFQ Level 6 or above) or equivalent industry experience

Experience required in the following areas

• Experience in a mission-critical 24/7 operational environment
  Experience in an NWP and/or suites and/or forecast production domain is desirable but not essential – training will be provided

Knowledge and skills

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet precisely all these criteria.

In particular, we welcome applications from candidates with other technical/computing backgrounds to join this multi-disciplinary team.

Demonstrable knowledge and skills in some of the following:

• Programming (any language) or scripting (Python, Ruby, Perl, Go)
• Cloud systems: Containers, Docker, Ansible, Terraform, AWS or similar
• The server, storage and networking components of Cloud applications
• Observability, monitoring, logging and analytics, tracing applications
• General Linux system administration

Please provide clear examples of your knowledge and experience in the space provided on the application form.

Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and interviews will be conducted in English. A good knowledge of one of the Centre’s other working languages (French or German) is an advantage but not required.

Other information

Grade remuneration    The successful candidate will be recruited at the A2 grade, according to the scales of the Co-ordinated Organisations. ECMWF also offers a generous benefits package, including a flexible teleworking policy. The position is assigned to the employment category STF-PL as defined in the ECMWF Staff Regulations. Full details of salary scales and allowances available on the ECMWF website at www.ecmwf.int/en/about/jobs, including the ECMWF Staff Regulations and the terms and conditions of employment.

Starting date:               As soon as possible

Contract duration:       4 years with the possibility of further contracts 

Location:                       Bologna, Italy  (Candidates are expected to relocate to the duty station)  

As a multi-site organisation, ECMWF has adopted a hybrid working model that allows flexibility to staff to mix office working and teleworking. We allow for remote work 10 days/month away from the office, including up to 80 days/year away from the duty station country (within the area of our member states and co-operating states).

Successful applicants and members of their family forming part of their households will be exempt from immigration restrictions.

Interviews will take place via videoconference (MS Team).  If you require any special accommodations in order to participate fully in our recruitment process, please contact us via email:  jobs@ecmwf.int

Who can apply 

Applicants are invited to complete the online application form by clicking on the apply button below. 

At ECMWF, we consider an inclusive environment as key for our success. We are dedicated to ensuring a workplace that embraces diversity and provides equal opportunities for all, without distinction as to race, gender, age, marital status, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity and culture. We value the benefits derived from a diverse workforce and are committed to having staff that reflect the diversity of the countries that are part of our community, in an environment that nurtures equality and inclusion. 

Applications are invited from nationals from ECMWF Member States and Cooperating States, listed below:

ECMWF Member and Co-operating States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

In these exceptional times, we also welcome applications from Ukrainian nationals for this vacancy.  

Applications from nationals from other countries may be considered in exceptional cases.