Software Engineer (Linux System-level)

The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) develops and operates cutting-edge, high-performance computing (HPC) systems as an essential service facility for science. The centre enables world-class research through its scientific user lab, which is available to domestic and international researchers in academia, industry, and the business sector. The centre is operated by ETH Zurich and has offices in Lugano (headquarters) and Zurich.

As HPC and cloud technologies converge, CSCS strives to improve its support for large, diverse scientific and engineering applications. However, integrating and maintaining the necessary software components is a complex task. Software containers are one convinient way to control such complexity, but they also threaten the performance and efficiency that is essential to HPC. CSCS leads in efficient container technologies that work seamlessly on powerful supercomputers. To expand our team and capabilities, CSCS has an open position at one of our offices in Lugano or Zurich for a software engineer (Linux System-level).

Initially you will be involved in the following activities:

• Joining the agile team of Sarus to propose, design, and develop new features or enhancements that focus on engineering and automation aspects,
• Studying and implementing solutions that seamlessly integrate containers into our users’ workflows,
• Developing software engineering solutions for the infrastructure engineering, initially around topics such as desired-state configurations and flexible resource management.

As a software engineer specialized in system-level programming, you will design, implement, maintain, and document performance-critical, low-level Linux container technologies for HPC. The role entails collaborating on projects encompassing technologies that are the backbone of Linux container capabilities, such as namespaces, cgroups, and Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE). Your work will directly support overall HPC system usability, performance and efficiency.

Your responsibilities:

• Design and develop performance-critical, low-level system features of the container stack for projects aiming to incorporate cloud computing technologies into HPC systems;
• Enhance and optimize Linux container capabilities;
• Support deployments that use container technology by ensuring smooth operation and troubleshooting any issues that may arise;
• Engage in continuous learning to stay up to date with the latest advancements in relevant technologies.

Expected qualifications:

• Master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field;
• Knowledge of the Linux kernel environment, including namespaces, cgroups, FUSE, and other kernel features relevant to containers;
• Proficiency in programming languages such as C, C++, or Go for low-level system development and container runtime implementations;
• Understanding of distributed systems and how container runtimes fit within complex, distributed architectures;
• Experience with collective communication libraries.

Experience with the following is preferred, though there will be opportunities to learn and gain experience on the job:

• HPC usage and understanding of typical system elements;
• Developing container runtimes, either from scratch or as contributions to existing projects, and/or familiarity with OCI;
• System engineering in a Linux-based environment.

In an organization that values autonomy, ownership and continuous learning, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to gain specialized hands-on experience through activities characterized by the challenging aspects typical of the HPC field.

• ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions.
• You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits.
• We value the diversity of our team, and to further enhance the diversity of our workforce, we particularly encourage women to apply.