The Berkeley Research Computing (BRC) program is hiring several Graduate Student Interns. These positions are 20% to 25% (8 to 10 hours/week) appointments as Staff Research Associate / Student Assistants in Research IT. BRC is seeking talented and goal-oriented UC Berkeley researchers or research support staff, with strong oral and written communication skills, that will advance the research activities of faculty and researchers in a broad range of scholarly disciplines that rely on computing.

The mission of the BRC Graduate Student Interns will be to extend the reach and impact of campus and national research computing infrastructure in support of the research conducted by faculty and students at UC Berkeley.

The successful candidate will serve as a first point of contact for faculty, postdocs, grad students, and research staff to understand their research and facilitate access to computing resources that might best support their research. The candidate will learn about and support the myriad research projects happening across all of campus — not just within their own departments.

Key Responsibilities

  • Help campus researchers leverage computing and data resources by meeting with faculty, students, and staff to understand aspects of their research that rely on, or could be aided by, current computational methodologies, and helping them gain access to compute resources.
  • Education and outreach: developing training and outreach materials in response to researcher needs, and assisting with the program’s overall training and outreach program.
  • Documenting solutions to research challenges: contributing to existing documentation, expanding documentation in response to researcher needs, and developing use cases to inform new service development.

 

Knowledge and Skills

This role provides an opportunity to develop a diverse skill set, as well as to work with and receive mentoring from experts in a range of research areas and computational technologies.

Required Qualifications:

  • Have experience as a researcher in a computing- and/or data-intensive research area at the graduate level or above
  • Have experience providing technical support to others in at least one research area (including your own)
  • Demonstrate strong interpersonal skills in working with both technical and non-technical personnel with varying degrees of experience at different levels in the organization
  • Demonstrate strong abilities in critical analysis and creative problem solving
  • Be able to work both independently and as part of a dynamic interdisciplinary team

Desired Qualifications:

  • Experience with public cloud computing environments including Jetstream, AWS, Azure, Google Compute Platform, Digital Ocean, and/or others
  • Familiarity with academic and high-performance computing centers/services (e.g. Savio at UC Berkeley), including national initiatives such as the Open Science Grid or XSEDE
  • Experience and demonstrated interest in education, outreach, community-building or communication activities
  • Contributions to a data science/Software Carpentry bootcamp, D-Lab workshop, XSEDE training, or other computation-focused and/or data-focused training efforts

About the Organization

The BRC program is part of the Research IT group which, in coordination with campus partner organizations, provides information technology and consulting services focused on the needs of the campus research community.

Everyone in the BRC program works closely with staff in UC Berkeley’s Research IT group, LBL High Performance Computing Services, and a network of campus partners such as the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), D-Lab in the Data Intensive Social Sciences, the Statistical Computing Facility (SCF), and the University Library, among others.

To apply, please email your cover letter and CV to: [email protected]


Berkeley Research Computing is sponsored by the CIO, the Vice Chancellor for Research, and the Chancellor.