Job Title: Principle Systems Administrator
The MRC/UVRI Uganda Virus Research Unit on AIDS conducts large-scale epidemiological and intervention studies, clinical trials, virological and immunological research and behavioural studies, and has generated a wealth of research results that have been used to inform policy and practice, and that have led to a large number of scientific publications in peer reviewed journals over time.
The MRC/UVRI with the Sanger Institute is setting up the MRC/UVRI Ugandan Medical Informatics Centre (UMIC) that will be located at the UVRI campus in Entebbe. It will be closely associated with the Ugandan Ministry of Health and other educational and research Institutes in Uganda, as well as pan-African research centres as part of established collaborations with MRC/UVRI.
The central aims of this project are: (1) to develop a medical informatics in Uganda and (2) to develop human research capacity in medical informatics and computational genomics in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in collaboration with UK and SSA centres.
The UMIC is being developed to capitalise on technological advances in genomics and to ensure the efficient utilisation of data resources in clinical epidemiology and large scale genomics across SSA from on-going research programmes.
Job Summary: The Principle Systems Administrator will offer expert IT service to optimize the effective use of IT infrastructure resources in support of the scientific aims of the MRC/UVRI Ugandan Medical Informatics Centre (UMIC).
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
- Investigate and analyse complex and/or strategically important IT issues, leading a small team of other specialists to define, develop and implement optimal leading-edge solutions.
- Offer expert advice and guidance to the informatics community within the MIC, enabling others to work more independently and productively.
- Oversee the development and introduction of specific solutions ensuring that user needs are fully identified and met within agreed timelines and that appropriate skills transference and training takes place.
- Develop effective relationships with and a sound understanding of the needs of users to ensure that the IT infrastructure resource is effectively deployed to meet scientific priorities.
- Recruit, manage and develop a team of subordinate systems administrators to facilitate the activities of the UMIC.
- Guarantee that the network grade and quality of service meet performance targets through monitoring and initiating changes for improvement.
- Manage the administration of Service Level Agreements
- Ensure compliance with the computing policy with emphasis on ensuring software and data security and integrity using soft and hard solutions.
- Plan and implement business continuity efforts for the various centre’s information systems.
- Plan and implement system expansion, upgrades and improvements.
- Build and develop relationships and collaborations with external organisations and suppliers to exchange technical expertise and awareness of new developments.
- Setup and maintain a high-performance computational cluster based on Linux
- Setup and maintain a high-throughput distributed network file system (such as Lustre)
- Setup and maintain reliable/redundant network storage (e.g. using NFS)
- Investigate and resolve technical problems that arise with the above systems rapidly.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- The ideal candidate must hold a degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field
- At least three years of relevant experience
- Acknowledged expertise in a range of operating systems including Unix, Linux and networking systems
- Past exposure and experience in very large scale IT systems management
- Possess the ability to design and implement appropriate IT and networking architectures
- Degree-level understanding of bioinformatics/biology and computing
- Significant exposure and experience in providing a high quality customer-focused IT consultancy service
- Demonstrable expertise in building and debugging bioinformatics application code
- Relational database administration experience
- Demonstrated track record in scripting language e.g. Python, Perl
- Possess the ability to effectively explain technical issues to non-technical users
How to Apply Job:
All candidates should send their applications including copies of academic qualifications, curriculum vitae and names plus telephone contact details of three (3) referees should either be addressed to: The Human Resources Manager, MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS, Uganda Virus Research Institute, P. O Box 49 Entebbe, Uganda or send by email: recruitment@mrcuganda.org
NB: Only short listed candidates will be contacted for interviews
Deadline: 23rd May 2014 by 5pm
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