Associate Director for Research Computing

Department: IT Academic & Research Technologies
Division: Information Technology (NUIT)
Requisition #: 13452
Location: Evanston
Full Time Percent: 100.00
Grade: ITS / 83
Salary: TBD

Job Summary

In cooperation with the Director of Research and Academic & Research Technologies and in consultation with the Office of Vice President for IT, the Associate Director for Research Computing is responsible for major new initiatives and the ongoing support superior computing, storage, consulting and software tools for NU researchers.

The Associate Director for Research Computing is responsible for the development of NUIT's Research Innovation Center and its ongoing management, a new faculty support center at NU that will provide face-to-face consulting services to NU researchers in high performance computing, in best practices in new visualization and informatics techniques, and will serve as a gateway to external computing resources for researchers such as the Blue Waters petascale computing system and to Cloud Computing projects. 

The success of the Research Innovation Center will be judged on its ability to help transform research computing practices of faculty and graduate students at the University.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Developing and managing the Research Innovation Center at NU; 
  
• Making the Research Innovation Center a model center for faculty support services among our peer universities in North America in high performance research computing; 
  
• Developing requests for funds, working closely with Facilities Management on space, and developing department partnerships for expanded capabilities of the Research Innovation Center; 
  
• Establishing effective relations with major external research computing services of importance to NU researchers including the current identified external efforts include the Blue Waters petascale computing effort at NCSA, the San Diego Supercomputing Center, and cloud computing efforts with Google, Amazon and IBM; 
  
• Driving the University's efforts to understand when our researchers can be most successful in their research investigations with the use of external computing resources rather than with (solely) NU-based systems;
  
• Preparing grant proposals with NU research teams and with NUIT developers for new research computing systems for the University; 
  
• Serving as Co-PI or PI on sponsored research projects; 
  
• Developing strong working relations with USA funding agencies¿ program officers, to the advantage of NU research teams and their funded research;
  
• Initiating NU faculty planning and advisory teams on NU research efforts; 
  
• Serving on NUIT research computing task forces and planning committees in a leadership and planning role;
  
• Managing developers and engineers in the Research Innovation Center in high performance computing practices and in software development architectures for new research systems; 
  
• Managing these full-time staff and also contract hires to the highest standards of professionalism in faculty engagement;
  
• Conducting campus workshops, campus briefings, NU courses and international conference presentations on NU research computing technologies;  
  
• Advancing the University's efforts to bring high performance computing practices into graduate students' courses;
  
• Performing other related duties as required or assigned.
  Minimum Qualifications
• A master's degree in computer science, engineering, medical science, or physical science, or the equivalent combination of education, training and experience from which comparable skills can be acquired;
  
• Minimum of 10 years experience in software project management for research computing applications or systems development for research efforts;
  
• Minimum of 5 years experience in managing senior staff at a center or its equivalent for support of research investigators;
  
• Proven track record in writing successful proposals to NSF, NIH, NASA, DOE, MacArthur Foundation Mellon Foundation or other academic research funding organizations;
  
• Experience in managing the entire life-cycle of research computing support services for University investigators;
  
• Advanced software development skills in research computing applications, or advanced systems engineering skills in HPC (high performance computing) clusters and storage systems;
  
• Tested communications and partnership-building skills with university research faculty; 
  
• Proven ability to inspire confidence among research faculty in trusted partnerships with IT Support units;
  
• Seasoned grant writing skills and a successful track record in creating (and advancing) planning proposals for HPC services;
  
• Excellent time, staff and project management skills; 
  
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, plan and implement new services, mentor and supervise senior staff; 
  
• Ability to inspire both creativity and performance-to-deadlines skills among software developers and system engineers; 
  
• Effective teamwork with managers across the Research and Academic & Research Technologies department, with other directors across NUIT, and with school-based technology leaders at NU;  
  
• Effective teamwork with directors of external computing teams and research centers that are important to NU efforts;  
  
• Excellent interpersonal skills with program officers and staff at funding agencies for NU research efforts;
  
• Effective teaching and conference presentation abilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• A Ph.D. (or advanced graduate degrees) involving HPC resources with a university science team, a national research lab or a corporate research center or the equivalent combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge and abilities can be acquired;
  
• Experience as a PI or Co-PI on a sponsored research project involving software systems development for researchers or systems development of a major HPC system;
  
• Deep understanding of new computing, software and storage practices for university research efforts, for example, areas of mastery could include current large-cluster computing practices, Grid Computing services, advanced visualization and analytics, new data and informatics practices, or software development for research computing applications;
  
• Proven ability to lead development teams composed of researchers and senior IT staff;
  
• Proven ability to lead planning teams composed of faculty, deans or senior academic administrators, and senior IT staff in successful funding efforts.
  

  ---

Northwestern University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action educator and employer.

To apply for this position, please enter the job requisition number into the Job Posting online form and select the search button. Once the job link appears in the window, select the check box of the job to which you'd like to apply and select "Apply to Jobs in Basket."