SURFsara is looking for a consultant who will help to design a research data infrastructure that translates the universities’ research data policies into an infrastructure and develop applicable workflows for researchers to adhere to these policies. The effort will result in a new service that SURFsara is going to host for its stakeholders.

Datamanagement has recently gained a lot of attention. In applied sciences research shifts from compute-intensive research to data intensive-research. Moreover, funders ask researchers to carry out proper data management not only for big data but also for small amounts of data to guarantee the quality of scientific results, reproducibility and reusability of scientific data. To support this trend SURFsara, the Dutch universities and research institutes are designing a practical implementation for research data management.

What does the position entail?

SURFsara is looking for a consultant who will help to design a research data infrastructure that translates the universities’ research data policies into an infrastructure and develop applicable workflows for researchers to adhere to these policies. The effort will result in a new service that SURFsara is going to host for its stakeholders. You will become part of a multidisciplinary team at SURFsara combining expertise on storage and compute systems, data management and computational analysis workflows.

We are looking for a highly-motivated person who is able to develop a portfolio of solutions and put them into practice.

What will you do exactly?

• Analysing current research workflows with respect to data handling and design new ones
• Scouting for and evaluating technologies for data management
• Integrating existing components and tools offered by SURFsara, the Dutch universities and European projects into a general framework
• Helping scientists to optimise their data flows; translating scientists needs to existing or newly developed infrastructure and services
• Helping ICT departments to design and implement their data management infrastructure
• Combining expertise on storage and compute infrastructure, data and metadata management and computational workflows.

What we want

• Msc in informatics, bioinformatics, physics or related field; Bsc with at least 3 years of working experience
• Familiarity with scripting languages (unix shell or perl)
• Familiarity with programming languages (java, c/c++ or python)
• Experience in using remote systems, e.g. remote compute servers
• Excellent communication in Dutch and English
• Excellent communication skills in a multidisciplinary field
• The ability and motivation to quickly develop datamanagement software skills, relevant for SURFsara
• Experience with datamanagement software, e.g. iRODS, Onedata or arvados is an advantage
• Experience with workflow engines or tools like galaxy, taverna or snakemake is an advantage.

What we offer

• The opportunity to work with passionate professionals in innovative teams
• The opportunity to participate in national and international conferences
• Helping scientists to meet the challenges of data management and working with iRODS
• This is a full-time position. The working week is 38 hours.
• The salary is based on the university CLA (VSNU) pay scale, levels 10/11, and is dependent on your level of education and experience: from €2,552 to a maximum of €4,691 gross per month for a full-time position (38 hours)
• 8% holiday pay, fixed year-end bonus of 8.3%, 29 holiday days per year (for a full-time position). If you work two hours extra per week (40-hour working week), you will be entitled to 12 extra holidays.
• Reimbursement for commutes of up to 45 kilometres (one-way)
• ABP pension (pension fund for the public sector and education)
• The initial contract is for a period of one year.