LIGO Lab DevOps and Platform Engineer

Caltech is a world-renowned science and engineering institute that marshals some of the world's brightest minds and most innovative tools to address fundamental scientific questions. We thrive on finding and cultivating talented people who are passionate about what they do. Join us and be a part of the diverse Caltech community.

LIGO Laboratory (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) seeks a highly motivated and skilledLIGO Lab DevOps and Platform Engineerto join its team.

This position is located in Pasadena, California.

LIGO Laboratory is a National Science Foundation major facility dedicated to observing the newly discovered gravitational-wave universe. Jointly operated by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the LIGO Laboratory operates world-leading observatories near Richland, WA and Baton Rouge, LA as well as R&D centers on the Caltech and MIT campuses. The LIGO Laboratory's mission spans a broad and vibrant array of activities related to gravitational-wave physics and astronomy, including detector operations, R&D toward detector improvements, gravitational-wave astrophysics, observatory operations, and education and public outreach.

For more information, please visit the Laboratory website: www.ligo.caltech.edu

Job Summary

The successful candidate will play a leading role in software infrastructure support of the LIGO Laboratory.

This role will enable LIGO to make exciting scientific discoveries and extract critical scientific information from LIGO observations. The person selected for this role will be a valued member of a world-leading scientific computing team and will have the opportunity to use their skills to contribute significantly to cutting edge data science.

Essential Job Duties

• Design, implement, and maintain Unix-based systems supporting scientific computing and data analysis.
• Advise computing management on technical and architectural sustainability of servers, systems, storage and network infrastructure.
• Develop and maintain automation and infrastructure-as-code (Puppet, Ansible, Terraform, etc.) to enable reliable, scalable environments.
• Build and support CI/CD pipelines and internal development workflows (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
• Implement and manage monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to ensure infrastructure health and operational visibility.
• Analyze and address complex system, application, and network issues, including performance and security problems.
• Ensure security, compliance, encryption, and access-control best practices across systems and workflows.
• Collaborate with scientific researchers to understand their app needs and design effective support systems and processes.
• Evaluate and integrate new tools, technologies, and methodologies to improve efficiency and reliability.
• Lead small technical projects and mentor junior staff, contributing to strategy, standards, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Clearly communicate and document proposals, progress, and deliver solutions to technical peers, end-users, management, and scientific collaborators.
• Other duties as assigned.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree, or equivalent experience in a relevant scientific or computing-related field.
• 8+ years supporting complex Unix-based systems.
• Expertise in automation and tooling with widely-used scripting and programming languages (e.g., Python, Ruby, Go, etc.).
• Experience working directly with users or researchers to gather and refine requirements and translate them into practical and sustainable technical solutions.
• Practical experience implementing monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions.
• Ability to ensure that security, compliance, and governance best practices are followed across all systems.
• Ability to evaluate and implement new, custom tools and technologies to improve development and operational efficiency.
• Ability to identify, diagnose, and address complex infrastructure issues in production environments.
• Proven ability to work independently and contribute to team leadership, project planning, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, and experience writing clear scientific proposals and/or technical documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in a relevant scientific or computing-related field.
• Experience or interest in gravitational-wave astronomy or large-scale scientific data analysis.
• Experience with container orchestration and infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform) for cloud and on-prem environments.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
• Familiarity with Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks or scientific software development practices.
• Advanced cybersecurity experience, including encryption, vulnerability scanning, and risk assessment.
• Experience leading small engineering teams, guiding junior staff, and directing technical initiatives.

Required Documents

• Resume