Assoc Director, Information Technology Biogen
Cambridge, MA

Job Description

Job Description

Reporting to the Head of Advanced Infrastructure, this Advanced Computing Lead will play a critical role towards ensuring the usability, availability and reliability of the HPC computational and storage infrastructure by performing systems administrative and maintenance tasks, fulfilling user requests, resolving incidents and outages, providing comprehensive user training, maintaining high quality documentation, participating in the design and deployment of complex IT systems, and collaborating closely with the research community to more effectively leverage our HPC infrastructure.

This person will oversee a team of in-house engineers and contractors to ensure that the key responsibilities listed below are accomplished

- This person will own delivery of services to our customers and set strategic direction for Biogen in this area.

The ideal candidate will possess an accomplished professional track record combined with exceptional technical acumen, self-confidence, excellent written and verbal communication skills, and a demonstrated potential to continually grow into new responsibilities.

She/he must be a self-motivated team player who is coachable, flexible, resilient, and comfortable working under high pressure with multiple deadlines and minimal supervision in a dynamic research environment.

Key responsibilities:

* Coordinate incident management and resolution of Data Lake and HPC related computational and infrastructure events.
* Leverage SaaS and Cloud where possible to enable the business to take advantage of our Data Lake and HPC environments.
* Provide user advocacy and escalation on behalf of Data Lake and HPC customers with other IT organizations, vendors, and/or partners as needed.
* Manage routine maintenance tasks and systems administrative activities to ensure reliable and effective operation of the Data Lake and HPC computational infrastructure and application portfolio.
* Sustain Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) management through routine systems health assessment, maintenance of high quality documentation, and real time license management.
* As a member of a global IT team, participate in problem resolution related to application issues across business units and regions; this includes working with business colleagues, business-facing IT colleagues, infrastructure teams, external partners, and/or vendors.
* Define and deploy new infrastructure capabilities and functionality by participating in various project phases.
* Establish an informational IT "knowledge base" containing documentation of applications, policies, procedures, infrastructure, and other critical Data Lake and HPC information assets.
* Collaborate with Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners and other vendors responsible for IT core support services and operations as required.
* Demonstrate excellence in customer care, assurance and service quality; ensure all appropriate Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in core service metrics are met or exceeded.
* Ensure change management processes are continuously followed to maintain a stable production environment.
* Ensure the health of the Data Lake and HPC computational infrastructure and react proactively to identify and resolve potential problems.

#LI-CB1

Qualifications

* Big data experience Required - "hortonworks" experience is a must have.
* Experience in administering Spark clusters - must have.
* Configuration of Rshiny, Rconnect, Rstudio applications and deploying Rshiny apps.
* Experience in MongoDB administration
* Programming skills in Python and Java.
* Linux - Linux system administration, server management - Highly required
* Shell scripting desired
* Experience in Cloud Formation Templates (AWS)
* Cloud - AWS
* Ansible - configuration management tool - nice to have.
* Prior experience in Pharma industry is an added benefit
* 8+ years computational environment support experience, 5+ years collaborating closely with technical infrastructure teams. Direct experience supporting researchers and data scientists in the biotech, academic, and/or pharmaceutical industries is a must.
* Working and demonstrable knowledge of the following topics:

o Systems administration, monitoring, performance tuning, and scripting under Windows and UNIX.

o Workstation, data center, cluster, and cloud-based scientific computing environments.

o Cluster scheduling and job monitoring.

o Virtualization and remote computing.

o Scientific application support and documentation with an emphasis on bioinformatics, cheminformatics, 3D visualization and imaging, modeling and simulation, and workflow analysis.

o Enterprise storage, networking, data stewardship, and security.

o Unstructured data platforms and engineering.

o Change management, issue tracking, and incident analysis.

* Unwavering commitment to supporting the Biogen research community. This may occasionally include working off-hours to resolve incidents or deploy additional capabilities.
* Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and troubleshooting abilities.
* Strong written and verbal communication skills.
* Flexibility and resiliency. Must be able to work independently with minimal supervision, collaborate on multi-disciplinary teams, and adjust to the unique challenges offered by a rapidly changing research environment.

Other desirable skills include:

* Knowledge of Perl, Python, or another high level programming language.
* Strong familiarity with shell scripting in the Linux environment.
* Previous experience building and/or testing software applications, supporting software engineering environments, administering databases, or managing DevOps platforms.
* Systems automation using Ansible, Puppet, Salt, or Chef.
* High comfort level with modern database, web, and collaborative technologies.
* Familiarity with the Amazon Web Services ecosystem and Atlassian tool stack.

Education

BA/BS in computer science, engineering or related technical disciplines is required. PhD or other advanced degree preferred.