The Computer Systems Administrator is part of the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, Division of Natural Sciences and the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center (VVRC) at Vanderbilt University and is a position that will provide support to faculty and laboratories in the College of Arts and Science, Law School, Peabody College, School of Engineering, and School of Medicine. Builds necessary infrastructure to support the scientific computing environment. This position provides support services for system administration, networking, enterprise-level and system-level storage management, performance tuning, monitoring and capacity planning. Reporting directly to Computational Director, the Computer Systems Administrator provides support for mission-critical desktop computing of VVRC and Department of Psychology research staff as well as desktop computing in a variety of complex research environments.

The Computer Systems Administrator will have duties that include the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications; the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification, and support of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to laboratory researcher or system design specifications; and the design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer systems and programs interfaced with a variety of complex electronic apparatus used in psychology, vision science, and neuroscience research.

The Department of Psychology in the College of Arts & Science has 27 faculty (both tenure and non-tenure lines) who are aligned within three specializations: clinical psychology, cognition and cognitive neuroscience, and neuroscience. We are first and foremost a research-oriented department, and our faculty comprises nationally and internationally recognized scholars in their fields of research. Our Undergraduate Program currently consists of nearly 160 undergraduate majors. Our approximately 40 Ph.D. students in the Department's Graduate Program will join, upon graduation, alumni employed in public and private institutions and organizations, as well as in private practice.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Plan, specify, coordinate, arrange for connectivity and administer network servers and devices with emphasis on system integrity.
  • Responsible for Linux enterprise servers maintained by the Department of Psychology and VVRC. Requires specific knowledge and expertise with Fedora and Ubuntu Linux distributions, Docker, LXC, KVM, Samba, Netatalk (Apple File Sharing Protocol aka AFP), SSH/SCP/SFTP, NFS, XFS, ext4, and zfs file systems for handling large storage arrays, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), Postgresql, and Kerberos authentication of Linux servers against Active Directory.
  • Support enterprise-level virtualization with VMWare, Virtual Box, LXC, Docker, and KVM.
  • Support SATA/SAS-based storage arrays with fiber channel interconnects.
  • Provide support for Linux, Windows and Apple servers in faculty laboratories.
  • Plan and execute recurring system maintenance tasks, including the application of operating system/applications patches/upgrades and conducting system security audits.
  • Monitor and analyze system performance and capacity data, identifying potential problems before they occur.
  • Assist providing local and remote backup and recovery processes.
  • Manage physical resource requirements, e.g., server room and surplus equipment, ensuring research needs are met.
  • Plan and coordinate technology changes with other departments.
  • Install and configure third-party software, third-party tools as required by researchers.
  • Document system/environment configurations and procedures.
  • Perform hardware replacement maintenance as necessary.
  • Programmatically automate recurring tasks.
• Monitor networked systems performance to ensure efficient performance and appropriate system security.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve the most challenging software, hardware, and network client-server problems for mission-critical administrative computing by the Department of Psychology and VVRC staff.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve the most challenging software, hardware, and network client-server problems for research computing, typically in coordination with laboratory research personnel.
• Design, implement, and administer client-server solutions such as databases and other academic and administrative software served over the network.
  • Make available and support large-scale storage resources for data collection and analysis for Dept of Psychology and VVRC research laboratories. Also, provide guidance when purchasing research systems for data collection and analysis.
• Provide education and guidance to laboratory technical staff, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students in the support of research computing solutions.
  • Supervise the installation and upgrades of server and client software in research laboratories, as well as administrative and faculty offices.
  • Set up and configure network servers, desktop systems and peripherals, connections to the campus network and other networks as appropriate.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve software, hardware, and network problems for laboratory personnel.
  • Upgrade desktop software and hardware, including peripherals.
  • Provision of desktop, peripheral and server hardware repair via third party vendors.
• Provide formal and informal training to users on server-side operations and software as well as desktop operations and software.
  • Provide assistance to research laboratory personnel in connecting to large scale storage servers. Troubleshoot issues with Matlab, SPSS, and other software necessary for research. Support Adobe and Microsoft products necessary in the creation of scientific presentations and publications.
• Act as liaison with other campus computing organizations in facilitating the correction of network and software problems on an as-needed or assigned basis. Effectively communicate issues and resolutions to all levels of the organization.
  • Act as liaison with VUIT in facilitating the joint determination of enterprise level IT solutions.
  • Act as liaison with ACCRE in facilitating the joint determination of enterprise level solutions for data storage with support of file transfers and remote access.
  • Act as liaison with VUIIS in facilitating the transfer of files from the VUIIS servers for local data analyses. Provide assistance to the VUIIS systems administrator with special projects that will benefit both VUIIS and the VVRC research groups.
  • Act as a liaison with IT support staff in the Kennedy Center for those researchers with appointments.
• Maintain appropriate certifications and/or technical knowledge and skills appropriate to the scientific computing environment.
• Keep abreast of changes in hardware and software to knowledgeably advise research faculty, staff and trainees and to maintain and improve the computing infrastructure.
  • Maintain knowledge of current and anticipated developments in Apple, Windows and Linux environments and applicable data storage capabilities
  • Maintain knowledge of current and anticipated developments in wired and wireless network technologies.