Closing date: Tuesday, 11 April 2023
About ECMWF
ECMWF is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It is an intergovernmental organisation created in 1975 by a group of European nations and is today supported by 34 Member and Co-operating States, mostly in Europe. The Centre’s mission is to serve and support its Member and Co-operating States and the wider community by developing and providing world-leading global numerical weather prediction. ECMWF functions as a 24/7 research and operational centre with a focus on medium and long-range predictions and holds one of the largest meteorological archives in the world. The success of its activities relies primarily on the talent of its scientists, strong partnerships with its Member and Co-operating States and the international community, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and the use of innovative technologies such as machine learning across its operations.
Over the years, ECMWF has also developed a strong partnership with the European Union, and for the past seven years has been an entrusted entity for the implementation and operation of the Climate and the Atmosphere Monitoring Services of the EU’s Copernicus component of its Space Programme, as well as a contributor to the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. The collaboration does not stop there and includes other areas of work, including High Performance Computing and the development of digital tools that enable ECMWF to extend its provision of data and products covering weather, climate, air quality, fire and flood prediction and monitoring.
ECMWF has recently become a multi-site organisation, with its headquarters based since its creation in Reading, UK, its new data centre in Bologna, Italy, and new offices in Bonn, Germany.
For additional details, see www.ecmwf.int.
About DestinE
ECMWF is a major partner in the implementation of the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative, together with ESA and EUMETSAT as partners. The objective of the European Commission DestinE initiative is to deploy several highly accurate thematic digital replicas of the Earth, called Digital Twins. The Digital Twins will help monitor and predict environmental change and human impact, in order to develop and test scenarios that would support sustainable development and corresponding European policies for the Green Deal.
DestinE will thus contribute to revolutionising the European capability to monitor and predict our changing planet, complementing existing national and European efforts such as those provided by the national meteorological services and the Copernicus Services. It will be run in several phases, of which the first, the implementation phase, covers the period end-2021 – mid-2024. Future phases are foreseen (subject to funding) that will operationalise the digital twins, scale-up system production and add applications and new twin options.
DestinE covers several demanding digital technology aspects required to develop, implement and operate the two high-priority digital twins on weather induced and geophysical extremes and on climate change adaptation. ECMWF will be responsible for the delivery of these digital twins, which will rely on complex Earth-system simulation models, data assimilation methods for fusing simulations and observations through inverse modelling and the integration of observations and models from sectors such as water and food management, renewable energies and socio-economic risk and disaster management.
These science components require advanced digital technology solutions to maximize the efficient computing and data handling on extreme-scale infrastructures, and to adapt and operate these infrastructures across different heterogeneous architectures within a federated framework. This federated framework includes the Core Platform and Data Lake developed, deployed and operated by ESA and EUMETSAT respectively.
The DestinE developments take forward the long-term investments of the ECMWF Member States in building a unique European prediction capability and will support the further advancement of member states services and Copernicus Services.
For more information on DestinE, see https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/destination-earth-destineand https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/what-we-do/environmental-services/destination-earth
Summary of the role
ECMWF has an exciting opportunity for a high-performance computing (HPC) Application Analyst to help shape and deliver DestinE developments and contribute to shaping workflows in an increasingly distributed HPC environment. The role involves collaborating with partners and analysts at HPC sites throughout Europe.
The role will be responsible for enabling the porting and efficient execution of ECMWF’s Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) and associated workflows on some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The successful candidate will also play a key role in the delivery of DestinE’s Extremes and Climate Digital Twins by supporting the efficient porting, implementation, optimisation and execution of ECMWF’s IFS, coupled to NEMO and FESOM ocean models, on EuroHPC supercomputers such as LUMI, Leonardo and MareNostrum 5.
The role is based in an existing team in ECMWF’s Computing Department and is expected to strongly collaborate with other teams across ECMWF and European partners working on the implementation of digital twins of the Earth System.
As well as working closely with ECMWF colleagues, the successful candidate will also support the relationships with ECMWF’s DestinE partners ESA and EUMETSAT, interact with external contractors as required, and as required may help with communications & outreach activities with dedicated partners of the consortia contributing to the DestinE implementation, stakeholders and the user communities, and contribute to regular progress reports to the European Commission.
Whilst this position can be based in either Bonn, Germany or Reading, United Kingdom, there will be strong collaboration with staff based at the other sites, so it is anticipated that visits to ECMWF’s other duty stations will be required.
Main duties and key responsibilities
- The design, installation and efficient execution of the ECMWF IFS and associated workflows on EuroHPC supercomputers and support the ongoing GPU adaptation activities
- Benchmark, optimise and troubleshoot the ECMWF IFS and associated ocean models on a range of EuroHPC supercomputers
- Provide application support to scientists working on the implementation of the IFS-based Climate and Weather Extremes Digital Twins and to related ECMWF operational activities as required
- Contribute to regular progress reports to the European Commission
- Contribute to the work & reporting of technical officers and supporting procured activities within DestinE by ECMWF
Personal attributes
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with a proactive continuous improvement approach
- Initiative and ability to work collaboratively with other ECMWF staff and European DestinE partners, but also able to work independently
- Good interpersonal and communication skills
- Dedication, passion and enthusiasm to succeed both individually and across teams of developers
- Highly organised with the capacity to work on a diverse range of tasks to tight deadlines and in a matrix management environment.
Education, experience, knowledge and skills (including language)
- An advanced university degree (EQF Level 6 or above) in computer science, physical, mathematical or environmental science or equivalent experience.
- Recent experience in high-performance scientific computing; running, debugging, profiling and performance tuning of large scientific codes using Fortran, C/C++, MPI, OpenMP on massively parallel computer systems, is required.
- Familiar with source code management (e.g. github) and experience with using UNIX/Linux tools to automate tasks and analyse results, including shell and at least one scripting language, ideally Python or Perl, is required.
- Experience with developing, optimising and running weather forecasting models on supercomputers would be highly advantageous.
- Experience with porting scientific applications/algorithms on GPGPUs using programming models such as (CUDA, OpenACC, OpenMP, HIP etc) would be highly advantageous.
- Strong knowledge of emerging parallel computer architectures (including accelerators from different vendors, such as GPGPUs, FPGAs, TPUs).
- A track record in identifying, investigating and resolving technical problems.
- Working effectively in English (interviews will be conducted in English)
- A good knowledge of one of the Centre’s other working languages (French or German) would be an advantage.
Other information
Grade remuneration
The successful candidate will be recruited at the A2 grade, according to the scales of the Co-ordinated Organisations and the annual basic salary will be GBP 63,782.28 or EUR 78,035.40 NET of tax. ECMWF also offers a generous benefits package, including a flexible teleworking policy. The position is assigned to the employment category STF-PL as defined in the ECMWF Staff Regulations. Full details of salary scales and allowances available on the ECMWF website at www.ecmwf.int/en/about/jobs, including the ECMWF Staff Regulations and the terms and conditions of employment.
Starting date: As soon as possible.
Length of contract: The total contract duration is expected to be four years (with the possibility of further extensions). The DestinE Contribution Agreement is divided into phases and the Centre is therefore required to contract initially for a period corresponding to such funding limitations, which in the case of this position means until the end of May 2024. However, subject to performance and project requirements, extensions to complete the four year period are currently intended to be offered to the successful candidate as soon as funding beyond the initial phase is confirmed.
Location: The position can be based either at ECMWF’s duty station in Bonn, Germany or ECMWF’s HQ in Reading, United Kingdom.
As a multi-site organisation, ECMWF has adopted a hybrid organisation model which allows flexibility to staff to mix office working and teleworking.
Successful applicants and members of their family forming part of their households will be exempt from immigration restrictions.
Interviews by videoconference (Via Teams) are expected to take place week in May 2022.
Who can apply
Applicants are invited to complete the online application form by clicking on the apply button below.
At ECMWF, we consider an inclusive environment as key for our success. We are dedicated to ensuring a workplace that embraces diversity and provides equal opportunities for all, without distinction as to race, gender, age, marital status, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity and culture. We value the benefits derived from a diverse workforce and are committed to having staff that reflect the diversity of the countries that are part of our community, in an environment that nurtures equality and inclusion.
Applications are invited from nationals from ECMWF Member States and Co-operating States, as well as from all EU Member States.ECMWF Member and Co-operating States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
In these exceptional times, we also welcome applications from Ukrainian nationals for this vacancy.
Applications from nationals from other countries may be considered in exceptional cases.
