Department: IT Research Computing Services
Salary/Grade: ITS/82

Job Summary:

Are you passionate about supporting researchers and teaching them the computational skills they need to be successful? Are you committed to partnering with others to collaboratively solve problems? Does leading exceptional research facilitators and support specialists interest you?

Bold discovery is a hallmark of Northwestern University's research enterprise. Northwestern IT is committed to providing excellent computational and data services for Northwestern researchers. We are looking for a Research Computing Support Lead to join the Research Computing and Data Services team in supporting world-class research across the university.

We are a team of computational and data-enabled research specialists with diverse backgrounds and skills. We work together with Northwestern researchers and IT partners to facilitate computational and data-enabled research across a wide breadth of research areas. As a Research Computing Support Lead, you will lead and supervise a team of staff and student computational consultants in delivering user support to researchers across Northwestern through tickets and consultations. You will also lead the development and implementation of operational and transformational improvements for support services to continue to meet the growing research needs across the University. You will consult with researchers and colleagues to understand the research community needs and inform and support our core training portfolio on computational methods, tools, and skills.

Specific Responsibilities:

* Ensure service excellence by overseeing the delivery of support for computational research, including the provision of technical support, consultations, and documentation to researchers to help them navigate the best use of local, national and cloud resources.

* Improve and maintain an effective and efficient user support experience including monitoring performance, remediation, and optimization strategies of application support.

* Drive continuous improvements and sustainable growth of user support operations to meet Northwestern goals and objectives. Recommend achievable goals and resource requirements to IT and stakeholders.

* Inform and assist the development of the core training portfolio and its delivery, including learning opportunities for computational tools, methods, available services, and related topics for students, faculty, and staff.

* Provide supervision, coaching and feedback to individuals on the computational support team (staff and students) for career growth and ensure they have the skills to deliver high-quality support and services for researchers. Delegate work as appropriate.

* Manage hiring efforts for undergraduate and graduate student employees. Provide input for performance management, hiring, promotion, and termination of staff.

* Oversee and lead projects related to the development of new support processes and improvements in researcher engagement, including ensuring projects stay within scope and are completed on time.

* Foster relationships within and beyond Northwestern to learn and share emerging research trends, service improvements, applicable methods and strategies for support, and professional skills.

* Represent Northwestern IT efforts at conferences and meetings. Represent the team at meetings with leadership and stakeholders.

* Continue professional development in areas necessary to perform duties related to the job, such as leadership, management, customer engagement, service delivery, application knowledge, etc.

Miscellaneous

Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

* Bachelor's degree in a relevant field is required or equivalent combined education and work experience.

* Demonstrate 4+ years' experience with large-scale computing systems, Linux-based large-scale multi-processor systems, and/or configuring software programs and applications in Linux-based computing environments.

* Demonstrate 2+ years' experience with consulting, training, and user support on large-scale computing systems.

* 1+ years mentoring or supervising staff and/or students/interns.

Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

* Experience developing effective and collaborative partnerships within and across organizations.

* Proven success leading projects from start to end within the specified timelines.

* Excellent verbal and written communication skills with an ability to communicate with technical and non-technical audiences.

* Familiar with application parallelization, acceleration and benchmarking tools and methods for high performance computing such as MPI, OpenMP, GPU computing, or others.

* Familiar with cloud computing and storage technologies from public cloud provides, such as AWS, Google, or Azure

Target hiring range for this position will be between $109,000-$150,000 per year. Offered salary will be determined by the applicant's education, experience, knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Benefits:
At Northwestern, we are proud to provide meaningful, competitive, high-quality health care plans, retirement benefits, tuition discounts and more! Visit us at to learn more.

Work-Life and Wellness:
Northwestern offers comprehensive programs and services to help you and your family navigate life's challenges and opportunities, and adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles.
We support flexible work arrangements where possible and programs to help you locate and pay for quality, affordable childcare and senior/adult care. Visit us at to learn more.

Professional Growth & Development:
Northwestern supports employee career development in all circumstances whether your workspace is on campus or at home. If you're interested in developing your professional potential or continuing your formal education, we offer a variety of tools and resources. Visit us at to learn more.

Northwestern strongly recommends COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters for people who can obtain them as a critical tool for minimizing severe illness. More information can be found on the webpage.

The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations. We acknowledge and honor the original people of the land upon which Northwestern University stands, and the Native people who remain on this land today.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes, including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply. Click for information on EEO is the Law.