About the role
Want your engineering skills to enable real scientific breakthroughs? We’re looking for a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to join our highly skilled IT Operations team at EMBL-EBI. At EMBL-EBI, our IT & Technical Services department underpins groundbreaking research that improves human and planetary health. As part of our small but highly skilled IT Operations team, you’ll play a critical role in ensuring the availability, reliability and efficiency of services that support researchers across the globe.
Responsibilities
In this hands‑on role, you will ensure the reliability, performance, and availability of the services that thousands of scientists rely on worldwide. You’ll tackle complex infrastructure challenges, improve automation and resilience, and help shape the future of our platform.
* Identity & Access Management: maintain, improve and standardise our authentication and authorisation infrastructure (Active Directory, Entra‑ID, Red Hat IDP).
* Email Systems: support and develop our mail services (Postfix, Cyrus, Roundcube, Mailman), including a planned migration to O365.
* Transfer services: support the systems we use for data transfer (Globus, Aspera, FTP, HTTP).
* File Replication (FIRE) Archive: develop and maintain our software‑defined object storage.
* Monitoring & Reliability: maintain and evolve distributed Check_mk monitoring while contributing to the development of a long‑term monitoring strategy.
* Automation & Orchestration: work with Gerrit, Foreman, RPM repositories, and Puppet to deploy, update and manage 3,000+ servers.
* Core Infrastructure: maintain and improve Puppet modules (NTP, SSSD) and support new Red Hat OS templates.
* Knowledge Sharing: produce documentation and Standard Operating Procedures that empower our Service Desk and improve user experience.
Requirements
* 5+ years of experience with Linux production systems.
* Experience with orchestration/automation (Foreman/Puppet).
* Strong troubleshooting ability (tcpdump, strace, log parsing at scale).
* Experience with directory services (389 DS or OpenLDAP).
* Ability to review and guide code in Python, Bash and Puppet.
Don’t be dissuaded from applying if you do not have all the right technologies in your portfolio – training will be provided to a candidate with the right experience and attitude.
Benefits and Contract Information
* Financial incentives: depending on circumstances, monthly family/marriage allowance of £278, monthly child allowance of £336 per child, non‑resident allowance up to £569 per month; annual salary review, pension scheme, death benefit, long‑term care, accident‑at‑work and unemployment insurances.
* Hybrid working arrangements.
* Private medical insurance for you and your immediate family (including all prescriptions and generous dental & optical cover).
* Generous time off: 30 days annual leave per year, in addition to eight bank holidays.
* Relocation package including installation grant (as applicable).
* Campus life: free shuttle bus to and from work, on‑site library, subsidised on‑site gym and cafeteria, casual dress code, extensive sports and social club activities (on campus and remotely).
* Family benefits: on‑site nursery, child sick leave, generous parental leave, holiday clubs on campus and monthly family and child allowances.
* Contract duration: 3‑year contract renewable up to 9 years.
* International applicants: we recruit internationally and successful candidates are offered visa exemptions.
* Diversity and inclusion: at EMBL-EBI we strongly believe that inclusive and diverse teams benefit from higher levels of innovation and creative thought. We encourage applications from women, LGBTQ+ and individuals from all nationalities.
* Job location: this role is based in Hinxton, near Cambridge, UK.
To apply, please submit a covering letter and CV via our online system. Applications will close on 08/01/2026.
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