Research Engineer – DevOps, AI Factory (RE3)

Reference: 366_25_AII_DI_RE3 Job title: Research Engineer – DevOps, AI Factory (RE3)

About BSC

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.

Look at the BSC experience: BSC-CNS YouTube Channel Let's stay connected with BSC Folks!

We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.

We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.

If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.

Context And Mission

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is seeking a Research Engineer to join the AI Institute as part of the AI Factory initiative. The AI Factory is a European project accelerating AI adoption across industry sectors, particularly supporting SMEs and startups while strengthening the European innovation ecosystem.

The AI Factory, which utilizes MareNostrum5's specialized AI partition, relies on the secure and efficient management, sharing, and analysis of diverse and often sensitive datasets, including public administration and health data. The Data Innovation Group designs and delivers the Data Services that support this ecosystem: Data as a Service, Data Discovery, Data Stewardship, Model and Dataset Publication, and Trusted Research Environments (TREs) for sensitive data.

This role will contribute to the infrastructure and security work behind this service portfolio. The work covers three complementary areas: deployment and operation of TRE platforms, including the integration of an external certified TRE service, support for internally developed platforms, and a secure HPC environment on the MareNostrum5 AI partition; development and deployment of the group's internal platforms and tooling, such as a research data hub for dataset and model publication and HPC workflow automation services, which are being scaled from AI Factory use to center-wide services.

This position provides an opportunity to build secure data infrastructure and research platforms at supercomputing scale, combining infrastructure automation, platform engineering, and information security practices, and supporting AI adoption across European public and private sectors.

This project is funded by the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, in accordance with Council Regulation (EU) 2020/2094 of 14 December 2020, and regulated by Regulation (EU) 2021/241 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 February 2021, in the context of the “BSC AI Factory” project.

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101234399 and Spain, Portugal, Romania and Türkiye. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme. It is also co-funded by the Spanish Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service and counts with the support of the Government of Catalonia.

Key Duties

• Contribute to the development, deployment, and operation of internal data platforms and tooling, including web-based services for dataset and model publication and workflow automation pipelines on HPC infrastructure.

• Contribute to the development, deployment, and operation of TRE platforms and their supporting infrastructure, including virtualized environments, containerized services, and isolated HPC partitions.

• Implement security controls across data services environments, including identity and access management, encryption at rest and in transit, and audit logging.

• Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, deployment, and monitoring using infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD practices.

• Integrate platforms with BSC institutional systems, in coordination with the Operations department (identity management, networking, monitoring, incident response).

• Support secure data ingress and egress workflows, including staging areas, pseudonymization services, and output control tooling.

• Provide technical support to researchers and AI Factory users working with the data services and TRE platforms.

• Contribute to documenting architectures, procedures, and best practices for platform operations and secure data handling.

Requirements

• Education

  • BSc or MSc in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Telecommunications, or similar.

• Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience

  • Experience administering Linux systems in production environments.
  • Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker; Kubernetes is a plus).
  • Experience with infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Experience deploying and operating web applications and services (backend services, databases, reverse proxies).
  • Experience implementing security controls: access management, network segmentation, encryption, logging and monitoring.
  • Good fluency in both spoken and written English.

• Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience

  • Knowledge of identity federation protocols is a plus.
  • Familiarity with information security standards (ISO 27001) or secure research environments (TRE, Five Safes) is a plus.
  • Experience with HPC environments and job schedulers (e.g., Slurm) is a plus.
  • Experience with web development (JavaScript, React, or similar frontend frameworks) is a plus.
  • Knowledge of REST API design and integration.

• Competences

  • Strong scripting and programming skills (e.g., Python, Bash).
  • Good knowledge of networking and system security fundamentals.
  • Good communication skills for effective collaboration across teams.
  • Ability to work both independently and within a team.
  • Rigorous and highly organized, with attention to documentation.

Conditions

• The position will be located at BSC within the Management Department

• We offer a full-time contract (35h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures

• Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration

• Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement

• Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona

• Starting date: asap

Applications procedure and process

All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain:

• A full CV in English including contact details

• A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.

Development of the recruitment process

The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:

• Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
• Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.

The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.

In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.

The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.

At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment [at] bsc [dot] es. For more information, please follow this link.

Deadline

The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.

OTM-R principles for selection processes

BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc. BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law. For more information follow this link