Graduate Research Infrastructure Engineer - IT Services - 106988 - Grade 6 (2 Positions) in Birmingham

Position Details

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £33,002 to £35,608, with potential progression once in post to £39,906.

Grade: 6

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to March 2028

Closing date: 24th February 2026

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do. We offer a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay and a pension scheme.

Background

Advanced Research Computing (ARC) is an award‑winning team based in IT Services that delivers high‑quality, research‑computing services. The Architecture, Infrastructure and Systems (AIS) group works in partnership with ARC’s Research Software Group and Research Engagement and Data Group to provide a sector‑leading environment for computationally and data‑intensive research.

Role Summary

The Graduate Systems Engineer is a member of ARC’s AIS group and will be developed to be responsible for:

• Maintenance and support of BEAR infrastructure.
• Contributing to the security and efficient operation of all elements of the infrastructure.
• Supporting users and responding to user issues and requests.
• Supporting outreach activity to enable exploitation of BEAR by a broader, and potentially non‑traditional, user base.

Main Duties

• Undertake administrative tasks, for example system updates, hardware faults and configuration management under the direction of the team lead.
• Undertake operational support of research computing services, for example HPC, Gitlab, Storage, Backup, Archive and Network.
• Undertake operational support of the underpinning systems that support the BEAR infrastructure, for example databases, network and configuration management.
• Under the guidance of other team members, support the upgrade and development of services and service components.
• Under the guidance of the team lead, develop proof‑of‑concepts and support the development of new services.
• Build relationships with the research community and participate in outreach activity; work with external suppliers to resolve hardware faults promptly; support the implementation of technical strategies and solutions to maximise the efficiency of operations.
• Creating and maintaining appropriate documentation to support services.
• Participate in the triaging rota for support tickets to facilitate appropriate and efficient responses to meet service levels.
• Undertake other such duties as may be required from time to time in furtherance of the work of IT Services.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Formal education to degree level in a STEM subject with some programming experience, or equivalent experience.
• Experience working with Linux, ideally with experience of Linux system administration.
• Proficiency in scripting skills is essential (such as BASH, Python, Perl).
• Experience of using source code version control such as git is essential.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships in a professional or similar environment.
• Ability to work as part of a team to achieve goals or deliver services.
• Ability to solve complex problems.
• A self‑motivated learner in the computing domain.
• Good communication skills, both written and oral.
• Good broad knowledge of C&IT, including latest technology industry trends.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with configuration management tool is highly desirable (such as Salt, Puppet or Ansible).
• An awareness of storage technologies such as SAN, NAS, direct attached, SAS is desirable.
• An understanding of networking design and operation (TCP/IP, Infiniband).
• Some experience of cloud and container technologies (e.g., OpenStack, Docker, Singularity).
• Some experience of HPC job scheduling tools (such as SLURM) would be an advantage.

Equal Opportunities & Diversity Statement

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations.