
Job ID: IT Manager
Deadline 8 March 2024
Overview
Aurora is a large Service provider of engineering and scientific support at ESA/ESAC.
Employees are our key resource! We know that progress is only achieved by a happy motivated team, that’s why Aurora employs top quality staff by offering challenging work, responsibility, a pleasant environment and excellent remuneration.
We are looking for an experienced Service Manager for the Infrastructure and Operations team of circa 24 staff, mostly in Spain and with 4 in the Netherlands. The post holder will lead IT assigned activities, ensure program deliverables are met and the program is operationally sound while achieving KPI performance. Utilize industry project management methodologies ITIL 3 and tools throughout program lifecycle. This position works directly on-site at the customer’s premises, autonomously with management support from the ESAC Service Manager and Aurora Directors. Incumbents of this position will regularly exercise discretion and substantial decision-making authority while leading team members and driving overall team performance.
Brief overview of the Infrastructure and Operations Team
As part of the ESA’s Data Science and Archives division, the Science and Operations IT Unit (SITU) is responsible for the planning, design, implementation, management, Operations, maintenance and evolution of all scientific and operations IT Infrastructure, IT projects and IT applications within the Science & Operations Department, which is part of the Directorate of Science SITU is also responsible for proposing commonality and cost efficiency of scientific and operations IT solutions, IT architectures and IT services and applications across the department and to provide it while ensuring the needed level of protection to all those IT components.
After the merger of the former ESTEC SSO IT team and its activities with SITU, SITU is now geographically distributed across European Space Research and Technical Centre (ESTEC) and European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), having presence in both sites. The IT infrastructure managed by SITU is also present in both sites. SITU is organized into two main sub-units:
- Infrastructure and Operations (I&O)
- Projects and Applications (P&A)
Specifically office laptops, and general user IT such as 365 and email are provided by ESA Corporate IT and outside of the scope.
For the sake of simplicity, only the key areas are shown in the following paragraphs. A detailed document is available upon application.
The I&O sub-unit provides IT services, solutions and consultancy in scientific and operations IT infrastructure and cybersecurity across the department. I&O also designs, operates, maintains and evolves this scientific and operations IT infrastructure. Infrastructure main areas (see RD11-03 for a more detailed description) are:
- Science data storage, preservation and distribution
- Science data processing
- Data Centre & common Science and Operations Department (SCI-S) IT infrastructure
- Science research environments
- Cosmos portal and services IT infrastructure
- IT Security
I&O involves the current systems:
- IT Storage systems (NetApp, Dell Isilon) and protocols (NFS, iSCSI, distributed, others)
- IT backup systems and software (Veritas, NetApp snapshots, LTO tape libraries)
- IT virtualization systems (VMware, RedHat, KVM, Oracle)
- IT Hyperconvergence Infrastructure
- IT monitoring systems (Zabbix)
- IT machine data and logging systems (Splunk)
- IT private and public cloud Infrastructure as a Service providers and systems (OpenStack, VMware, AWS)
- IT servers deployment and automation (RedHat Satellite, Ansible, Terraform)
- Databases installation (Oracle, Postgresql, Greenplum, Intersystems Cache)
- Big Data (Cloudera, Hadoop, Spark)
- Datacentre operations (openDCIM, rack monitoring)
- VLANs systems and infrastructures (10G/40G/100G technologies)
- Load balancers and web proxies (F5)
- HPC, HTC, parallel computing (Grid, MPI)
- Containers: Kubernetes, Docker
- CI/CD: Jenkins, Drone, Gitlab, BitBucket, Artifactory, Docker registry, Nexus registry
- Operating systems: Linux/UNIX, Windows, MacOS
Service Manager Duties
- Ensures that programs meet quality, schedule, milestone, and budget commitments and leadership for staff.
- Coordinate and lead customer facing meetings related to the program. Collaborates within the Program, Engineering, Quality and IT teams to develop and implement program management and ITIL methodologies, processes, tools and mentoring.
- Ensures that the goals and objectives of the program are understood and agreed with the ESA Technical Responsible and drive overall performance of IT team.
- Manages program expectations, scope, risk and changes.
- Provides leadership surrounding issue identification and resolution. Acts as point of contact for escalation of program issues and resolves program conflict.
- Works directly with System Engineers, IT Security expert/QA team to manage the technical aspects of a development project
- With assistance ensures monthly reporting, tracking team and program metrics.
- Resource management of team including prioritizing tasks and deadlines appropriately.
- Maintains a positive, collaborative working environment that instills respect, trust, quality and success as its core goals.
- Comply with ESA’s and Aurora’s values, code of conduct, quality, security and occupational health, safety and environmental policies and procedures.
- Verification of new engineers and technicians recommended by the recruitment team.
Specific qualification requirements
- Proficient in the English Language (Spoken and Written).
- Experience managing IT programs and leading teams of IT staff.
- Reasonable technical understanding of IT infrastructure, hardware, networks, application and security. We have technical experts in the team which can be relied upon.
- Proven effectiveness in managing project resources and prioritizing task conflicts.
- Team building skills.
- Meeting facilitation skills and leadership experience.
Legal and Security Requirements
- All applicants must be legally allowed to work in Spain without the need to obtain a work visa. Only European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA) and SWISS citizens can be employed by Aurora in Spain.
- Applicants are required to provide a copy of their passport and degree certificate. Aurora will validate the Degree with the issuing University and provide evidence to ESA.
- In line with ESA’s security requirements, prior to issuing a letter of employment the applicant shall provide to Aurora a recent official document declaring that they are of good conduct from the country where currently resident, and Aurora will validate your employment history.
Location
The work will be performed at the ESAC, the European Space Astronomy Centre at Villafranca del Castillo, near Madrid (Spain).
Contract
- The selected candidate will receive good remuneration in line with management responsibility.
- You will be registered for both social security and tax in Spain.
- The standard working hours are 40 per week. There are 12 public holidays and an additional 30 annual days holiday.
- In addition to public health services Aurora provides private medical insurance in Spain.
- Training to improve efficiency and provide strength for future career are of course included.
- Aurora can assist financially and provide recent experience information for relocation.
To be considered for this Position
Aurora shall select a candidate as soon as a good candidate has been identified. Please apply via our Job Application form quoting IT Manager as reference.
If not directly interested, feel free to share by this Job Vacancy with your friends!
“That’s one small click to apply, one giant leap for your career development.”