Banner
2 x OneLab Linux Systems Engineers (sysops)

The expanding OneLab experimental facility is recruiting two Linux Systems Engineers, or sysops, for its Network Operations Centre (NOC) based at UPMC Sorbonne Universités, Paris.

Summary

Contract: One year contract (in French, a "CDD"), renewable for two more years

Salary: 1600 - 2500 €/month gross (depending upon qualifications)
Note: The take-home amount in France, after the standard pension, health care, and tax withholding amounts have been removed, is typically 0.8 times the gross salary.
Employer: Networks and Performance Analysis (NPA) Group, LIP6 Computer Science Laboratory, UPMC Sorbonne Universités (Université de Paris VI), Paris, France

Education

  • Bachelors degree, or equivalent (licence in France), or
  • French BTS or DUT diploma, or equivalent, or
  • Higher diploma (Masters or engineering degree)

Languages

  • Fluency in English
  • Fluency in another language of the European Union (helpful)
  • Basic ability in French (helpful)

Technical competencies

  • Linux administration and development (vital)
  • Systems monitoring (e.g., Nagios, Cactii)
  • Shell and Python/Ruby programming
  • Remote hosted server administration
  • Apache, BIND, Postfix administration (helpful)
  • Linux VServer, Xen, KVM, or other virtualization system experience (helpful)
  • Experience with Joomla! or another CMS (helpful)

Qualities

  • Reliable (will be maintaining a system that has several hundred users, with important security issues)
  • Good communication skills (will provide user support and interact with other administrators on a daily basis)
  • Thrives in a collaborative work environment (our NOC coordinates the testbeds of several institutions)
  • Rigor in software development

Job Description

Summary

As a OneLab sysop, you will part of a small team responsible for the deployment, health, and security of a set of testbeds for computer networking research. This team provides support and training to experimenters who use the system. It also provides support for the websites and other online services (wikis, mailing lists, etc.) that OneLab requires. Members of this team also do some development.

Details

The testbeds include the PlanetLab Europe (PLE) testbed, which consists of hundreds of server nodes hosted at institutions throughout Europe, as well as a wireless networking testbed installed on the premises of the LIP6 computer science laboratory. The sysop team is also responsible for OneLab's Network Operations Centre (NOC), from which the activities of dozens of testbeds are to be coordinated. The team looks after services that run on machines in the NOC, which it maintains, as well as on remotely hosted servers, for which it takes care of the software aspects (installing new services, conducting backups, applying patches and upgrades, monitoring system health, etc.)

An area in which OneLab requires development  is in more comprehensive monitoring of the ways in which experimenters use the testbeds. The sysop team will work with the development team to improve monitoring and to make sure that the results of monitoring are well used to help the testbeds better meet user demand, for reporting to funding agencies on how the testbeds are being used, and for reporting to the public at large.

Regarding user support, the sysop team works through a ticket system to respond to experimenter requests for assistance as well as alerts from third parties in cases where the testbed activity raises security concerns. (This happens rather often, as PLE operates in the open Internet.) It assists in the preparation of documentation and tutorials for experimenters, and helps deliver those tutorials.
The sysops are part of the OneLab Operations Team in Paris that collaborates with other engineers at numerous: PlanetLab Europe developers at INRIA in Sophia Antipolis, France; PlanetLab administrators and developers at Princeton University, in the United States; administrators of the nine testbeds of the French national Equipement d'excellence FIT infrastructure that the OneLab team coordinates; and PLE site administrators at hundreds of institutions across Europe. Sysops work closely with project managers, the communications team, researchers, and professors at UPMC Sorbonne Universités.

The position is to work in a French-speaking environment, however team members are not required to know French in order to start the job. Everyone in the team is conversant in English, and the team communicates in English at the European level, with the United States, and with partners elsewhere in the world.

Job application

For immediate consideration, please send a CV and letter of introduction to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . (Acceptable formats: ASCII text, Word, OpenOffice, PDF, or HTML.)


Important: The subject field of your email should start with the text "[OneLab Sysop]".

Please do not hesitate to inquire for more details before submitting an application.