Storage Administrator

Salary: £80,000 - 80,000 per year

Requirements:

• Degree in computer science or equivalent industry experience
• At least 3 years of experience in the operation and maintenance of large-scale and high-performance storage infrastructures
• Solid experience in the provision of hardware-based storage solutions across a range of vendors, such as Isilon, NetApp, and Pure
• Proven experience in managing the end-to-end lifecycle of user storage, including quota policy design and implementation, advising users on storage best practices, and data tiering execution
• Solid experience in bare metal hardware deployment
• Strong Linux administration skills, ideally with RHEL or a RHEL clone
• Strong skills in automation frameworks, including Ansible
• Strong skills in at least one programming language, ideally Python
• Experience debugging complex issues within storage systems related to user or workload behaviours, or hardware
• Strong interpersonal and written English communication skills
• Proven ability to work well in a team, build positive relationships, and share knowledge
• Diplomatic approach to conflict resolution
• Resilience under pressure
• Experience with high-performance parallel file systems such as Lustre, GPFS, or Weka is desirable
• Experience with storage benchmarking tools, for example ior, iozone, or warp, is desirable
• Experience with cloud technologies, including Google or AWS certification, is desirable
• Experience with various network technologies, such as Ethernet and InfiniBand, is desirable
• Experience with methodologies for infrastructure monitoring is desirable

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with members of IT and Technical Services and technical users across EMBL-EBI
• Design, deploy, and operate the substantial storage resources required to support large data flows fundamental to EMBL-EBI activities
• Act as the primary point of contact for storage consumption
• Manage the lifecycle of data from high-performance tiers to long-term archives
• Ensure storage is used efficiently and according to organisational policy
• Own the end-to-end management of user storage, including quota policies and storage tiering strategies
• Define, implement, and enforce storage quotas and usage policies
• Implement and maintain storage tiering strategies across high-performance, standard, and archive tiers, including Tape and Object
• Monitor storage consumption and proactively advise users on data management to prevent capacity exhaustion
• Ensure the operation, reliability, and integrity of storage resources, including NAS, SAN, Object, and Tape
• Design and implement future storage infrastructure, including logical configuration, physical racking, and cabling
• Advise users on storage requirements and best practices to ensure efficient use of available resources
• Work with the HPC team to ensure parallel file systems remain performant and diagnose issues associated with intense or unusual workloads
• Automate the setup and configuration of storage infrastructure using tools such as Ansible
• Lead storage benchmarking during procurement and track performance over the lifetime of the systems
• Maintain and update reporting interfaces to deliver accurate monitoring and accounting of the infrastructure
• Produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation and operational procedures

Technologies:

• AWS
• Ansible
• Cloud
• Ethernet
• Hardware
• InfiniBand
• Support
• Linux
• Network
• Python
• RHEL
• Security
• DevOps

More:

We are EMBL-EBI, part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and we are a worldwide leader in the storage, analysis, and dissemination of large biological datasets. We provide the global research community with access to publicly available databases and tools that support healthcare, food security, and biodiversity. This role sits within our Systems Infrastructure Team and reports to the HPC & Storage Coordinator. We are based on the Wellcome Genome Campus alongside other research and biotech organisations, surrounded by the Cambridgeshire countryside, and we offer a highly collaborative and inclusive environment with a relaxed atmosphere. Our benefits include flexible and hybrid working arrangements, private medical insurance for you and your immediate family, generous leave, relocation support, campus facilities, family benefits, and allowances for non-UK residents. The contract length is 3 years, renewable up to a maximum of 9 years, and the salary is Grade 6 depending on relevant experience.

last updated 34 week of 2026