Applied Physicist (ALICE Event Processing Nodes)

Job Description

Introduction

Are you an expert in testing, integrating, and operating hardware, software and computing resources for large high-energy physics experiments (HEP)? Would you like to coordinate the integration and operation of large computing infrastructure for the online processing of collision event data at the Large Hadron Collider? Then join the ALICE Experiment and contribute to the success of the data taking by taking the role of Technical Coordinator of the ALICE O2 EPN (Event Processing Nodes) project.

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment, https://alice.cern) is a dedicated heavy ion experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The ALICE Collaboration is studying the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities and temperatures. In Run 3+4 (2022-2029) ALICE will operate at a peak Pb-Pb collision rate of 50 kHz. The data of all collision events will be read out without any hardware trigger selection, calibrated, reconstructed and compressed synchronously with the data taking. The compressed data are then written to permanent storage for asynchronous (offline) analysis.  This will allow ALICE to assess rare probes with large backgrounds, for which data reduction with online triggers is not possible. This new approach heavily depends on the efficient and reliable functioning of the EPN farm, a GPU-based computing infrastructure of 300 servers hosting almost 2800 GPUs, running synchronous and asynchronous processing and being able to function as a GRID node for offline analysis when no beam operations are active.

Functions

Within the ALICE Management and Engineering Support group (EP-AIO), you will play a leading role in coordinating the operation of the ALICE O2 EPN team and infrastructure to support the delivery of mission critical computing services, such as online data processing and recording during data acquisition and offline data reprocessing.

Your functions will include:

• Detailed coordination of the operation of the EPN system, including acting as interface with other ALICE projects participating in the online and offline data taking, the ALICE Technical Coordination and the CERN IT department.
• Optimize the current set up and coordinate the engineering effort in related areas (installation, cooling, power, network fabric) ensuring the reliable operation of the EPN IT infrastructure.
• Organise and supervise software and hardware releases, installation, testing, validation and integration including the follow up of issues.
• Lead the procurement of new hardware and software packages, representing the EPN project with external developers and vendors for the definition of technical specifications and needs.