What are the responsibilities and job description for the Research Cyberinfrastructure Manager position at The Morgridge Institute for Research?
Description
Job Purpose
The Research Cyberinfrastructure Manager will provide technical oversight for the development team within the Research Computing group, overseeing a team including Research Software Engineers (RSEs) working on large-scale data management problems within the institute’s and national cyberinfrastructure as part of the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC).
The primary focus of this position is day-to-day oversight of the development and integration of the Pelican Platform—a distributed, global-scale platform for delivering data to compute workflows. The manager will work under the group lead to define technical road maps, prioritizing development workflows, and mentoring RSEs to ensure high-quality software engineering practices. While the position provides day-to-day team leadership and technical guidance, it operates within the broader Morgridge ecosystem, collaborating with the PIs who lead major NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure projects such as the Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing (PATh), the Pelican Platform, and the Fabric for AI-Driven Science (FabAID). The ideal candidate will bridge the gap between high-level objectives / architectures and daily software implementation, ensuring the team effectively leverages modern software engineering practices to advance Fearless Science at the Morgridge Institute.
Primary Responsibilities
? Technical Team Leadership: Lead and mentor a team of four RSEs, overseeing the development and implementation of software, including the Pelican Platform. Coordinate daily development workflows, execute project milestones, and ensure code quality and system robustness.
? Strategic Planning & Scoping: Interact with the Research Computing PIs to identify software engineering challenges. Translate architectural designs and principles into actionable technical requirements and plans.
? Project Oversight: Manage projects’ technical roadmap and delivery. Utilize project management and issue-tracking systems (JIRA, GitHub) to organize work, track progress, and communicate status to stakeholders.
? Software Engineering Practices: Improve and enforce best practices for systems development, including testing, code review, and the use of modern CI/CD tooling. Work with the team to enhance productivity, through use of agentic AI or other techniques.
? Cross-Team Coordination: Work with the integration and operations teams to identify and prioritize issues and coordinate rollout of new versions and functionality.
? Stakeholder Communication: Serve as a technical point of contact for external partners and the broader US and international cyberinfrastructure community. Represent the team at relevant technical meetings with external groups.
? Miscellaneous duties as required
Requirements
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.
Education and Experience:
? Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or related fields; Master’s degree preferred.
? 5 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 3 years in a leadership or senior technical / architectural role, preferably in a research, academic or distributed systems environment.
? Demonstrated experience leading or coordinating technical teams.
? Experience in utilizing or software [JW1] engineering inside research computing environments (batch, cloud, or HTC/HPC).
? Strong background in distributed systems design, architecture, and programming.
? Expertise in managing project workflows using issue trackers and version control systems (GitHub/JIRA).
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
? Proven ability to translate complex research goals into concrete software requirements and design documents.
? Strong familiarity with modern DevOps/Agile/Scrum development styles.
? Familiarity with CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions/Jenkins) and using agentic AI as part of software development.
? Ability to mentor and grow the technical skills of junior and mid-level software engineers.
? Deep understanding of, or rapid ability to learn, cyberinfrastructure projects and ecosystem (e.g., HTCondor, Pelican).
Working Conditions and Physical Effort:
? Work is normally performed in a typical office environment.
? Day-to-day, no or very limited physical effort is required.
? No or very limited exposure to physical risk.