Computing Engineer (IT-TC-LCG-2025-241-GRAE)

Job Description

Are you a curious and motivated computing graduate, eager to contribute to a global scientific infrastructure? Join CERN and help shape the future of distributed computing by improving how we monitor and understand the use of computing resources across the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), a global collaboration of more than 150 computing centers in more than 40 countries, serving cutting-edge particle physics.

As a member of the CERN IT department's Technical Coordination group, you will contribute to the design, deployment, and validation of a scalable monitoring system for data transfers based on the XRootD protocol.

XRootD is a data access technology widely used by LHC experiments to read and move scientific data efficiently across global storage infrastructures.

Your work will ensure that data traffic across heterogeneous storage systems is reliably monitored and visible in near real time. This monitoring capability is essential for ensuring transparent data access for experiments and maintaining the reliability of distributed computing operations across WLCG.

Your responsibilities

• Contribute to the design, validation, and deployment of site components for XRootD data monitoring, including integration with existing CERN and WLCG infrastructure.
• Participate in the validation of monitoring metrics by comparing collector data with network traffic statistics.
• Design and implement automated workflows for data quality validation, anomaly detection, and metric correlation across distributed sites.
• Collaborate closely with experiment and site administrators to ensure interoperability, scalability, and reliability of the new monitoring framework.
• Contribute to the evolution of WLCG monitoring dashboards and data analytics services, using modern DevOps and containerised environments (GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes).
• This position offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of distributed computing, data engineering, and monitoring automation, supporting the global computing infrastructure that underpins scientific discoveries at the LHC.

Your profile

• Experience or strong interest in software development for distributed systems and large-scale data infrastructures.
• Experience or background in data engineering or monitoring pipeline integration (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, InfluxDB).
• Exposure to Linux environments, scripting, and Git-based collaborative workflows.
• Familiarity with network monitoring, time-series data handling, or performance analysis tools.
• Hands-on experience in building or operating containerised services (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift) is desirable.

Skills:

• Programming experience in Python and solid knowledge of Linux environments.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, network monitoring, and data streaming frameworks.
• Some experience or interest in Go (Golang) would be an advantage.
• Experience with REST APIs and structured data formats (JSON, Avro, Parquet).
• Experience with data processing frameworks such as Apache Kafka or Spark.
• Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.

Eligibility criteria:

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State.
• By the application deadline, you have a maximum of two years of professional experience since graduation in Software engineering (or a related field) and your highest educational qualification is either a Bachelor's or Master's degree.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.
• Applicants without University degree are not eligible.
• Applicants with a PhD are not eligible.

Additional Information

Job closing date: 02.12.2025 at 23:59 CET.

Contract duration: 24 months, with a possible extension up to 36 months maximum.

Working hours: 40 hours per week

Job flexibility: Hybrid

Target start date: 01-February-2026

Job reference: IT-TC-LCG-2025-241-GRAE

Field of work: Software Engineering and IT

Benchmark job: 200020 - Computing Engineer

What we offer

• A monthly stipend ranging between 5196 and 5716 Swiss Francs (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN's comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: installation grant; family, child and infant allowances; payment of travel expenses at the beginning and end of contract.
• 30 days of paid leave per year.
• On-the-job and formal training at CERN as well as in-house language courses for English and/or French.

About us

At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.

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