Research Computing Support Specialist

Date Posted: 03/18/2025
Req ID: 42219
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Arts & Science
Department: Acceleration Consortium
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00057685

Description:

About us:

The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada’s leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs.

We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world.

The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Staff Scientists will advance the infield of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society’s largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics.

The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University.

Your opportunity:

Under the general direction of the Executive Director, AC, the Research Computing Support Specialist provides research computing support, computer system administration, network administration, programming/scripting/software development (especially in Python) and high-level research technical support services for AC in the development of novel workflows for automated discovery of materials.

The incumbent assumes the responsibility of a project leader for specific highly complex and highly technical IT projects for the research group(s) by providing technical leadership, system and software expertise, and support to the project.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading and planning IT projects
• Developing project schedules including milestones, critical path, timelines, deliverables and reporting
• Coordinating tasks for projects and other strategic initiatives with stakeholders
• Analyzing, troubleshooting and testing highly complex systems
• Analyzing, recommending and designing internal network solutions to meet client needs
• Planning and implementing IT systems independently
• Analyzing business and operational requirements to plan the implementation of new IT systems
• Serving as a resource on specific issues to a group of specialists

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related discipline, and/or acceptable equivalent combination of education and experience
• Minimum five (5) years of recent and related UNIX/Linux system administration experience in a highly technical and complex heterogeneous IT environment developing academic computing solutions preferably for a computing academic discipline
• Experience writing, modifying, and correcting scripts on Linux/Unix platform(s)
• Experience with virtualization, printing, backups, research programming, computational clusters, security, networking, open source software, databases,email servers, automated operating system installs, fileservers/data storage, and technical documentation
• Experience analyzing and troubleshooting complex IT and system problems
• Experience providing project leadership, including technical leadership, system expertise, and support to other technical staff projects
• Experience collaborating on IT purchase recommendations and independently costing IT projects
• Experience developing computer code in Python (or other related language)
• Experience using application containers
• Excellent verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to deal with people in a tactful and effective manner and the ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical people at their own level, explaining possibly complex technical concepts to a wide variety of non-technical users
• Goodproblem-solving skills, detail oriented
• Must have strong leadership skills, especially the ability to take personal responsibility to establish and maintain the goals and mission of the research group(s) served
• Proven ability to provide expert technical resources to others
• Clear and demonstrated ability to design, plan, analyse and improve systems
• Ability to follow good system administration discipline and practice
• Typing/keyboarding ability and ability to lift/move desktop and server computer equipment
• Ability to adapt as needed in a highly dynamic research-intensive Computer Science environment
• Must maintain broad technical knowledge and experience in a rapidly-changing field
• Ability to prioritize and meet multiple deadlines

Assets (Nonessential):

• Experience using HPC clusters an asset
• Experience with private and /or public cloud an asset

To be successfulin this role you will be:

• Adaptable
• Communicator
• Cooperative
• Multi-tasker
• Responsible
• Team player

Closing Date: 04/18/2025, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW 
Appointment Type: Budget - Continuing 
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:  
USW Pay Band 17 -- $107,820. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $137,883. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol. 
Job Category: Information Technology (IT)
Recruiter: Ann Yang

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.