Senior Cloud Engineer (Fixed Term)

We are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic Senior Cloud Engineer to be part of a new and exciting initiative to develop the UK Regional Centre (UKSRC) for the Square Kilometre Array (SKAO), the world's largest radio telescope.

The role is based in Research Computing Services (RCS) a leading UK National Supercomputing Centre and home to Dawn, the fastest AI supercomputer in the UK, providing facilities and services to world-renowned scientists, clinicians and engineers across the UK and Europe.

The University of Cambridge RCS provides HPC resources for UKSRC and is developing novel federated cloud platform technologies as well as providing leadership on system architecture. 

Who you will be working with

You'll be working in a team of Cloud engineers, in collaboration with National and International colleagues to help deliver, develop, operate and support the UKSRC and international cloud infrastructure and HPC resources and develop technical solutions as part of the development of the SKAO project.

What you will do

The successful candidate will become part of a diverse team of systems engineers, astronomers, and computer scientists developing advanced solutions to support world class science and deliver service for processing data from the world's largest radio telescope running on a Kubernetes platform. You will:

• Design, deploy, and manage OpenStack-based cloud environments.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues related to cloud infrastructure, HPC & Kubernetes environments.
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies to propose innovative solutions.
• Support Science teams by providing them with technical expertise and advice on best practices for using cloud-based environments.
• Propose & develop technical solutions to challenges while collaborating with UK & international teams.

What you will have

• Proven experience of deployment and administration of Linux systems.
• Utilizing Ansible & Terraform for configuration management & IAC.
• Strong understanding of virtualization technologies and cloud architecture, preferably but not limited to OpenStack.
• Development experience with scripting languages primarily with Python & Bash.
• Excellent knowledge of containerization technologies using Kubernetes & Docker, with the focus being on Kubernetes in a production environment.
• Proven DevOps experience of CI/CD principles, ideally but not essentially using a GitOps approach, using Helm & Kustomize.
• Solid understanding of networking principles in cloud environments.
• Working with Agile methodologies.

Some desirable, but not essential, skills we are looking for

• Experience using K8s Cluster API for managing cluster deployments & upgrades.
• Experience of GitOps tooling such as ArgoCD or FluxCD.
• Experience in working in a scientific environment and/or providing support to researchers.
• Experience working with HPC clusters and parallel file systems.
• Knowledge of GPU-accelerated computing and associated frameworks.
• Experience of performance profiling, monitoring tools, and software performance optimization.

The University is supportive of hybrid working and we aim to enable as many staff as possible work in a hybrid way if they wish and where their role allows. This role allows the post holder to be office based, work in a hybrid way or remotely with only minimal office attendance.

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available up to 30 December 2026 in the first instance.

We welcome applications from individuals who wish to be considered for part-time working or other flexible working arrangements.

All queries should be directed to recruitment@uis.cam.ac.uk in the first instance.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

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