Jobs at CAIDA

CAIDA's creative, research oriented working environment is intended to be attractive to anyone interested in working at the forefront of Internet development and research.

Applications must be formally submitted to be considered. Follow the instructions with the desired position for details.

COVID-19 Update: UC San Diego leadership is working closely with federal and state officials to help slow the spread of Covid-19. Visit UC San Diego’s Coronavirus portal for the latest information for the campus community.

For the time being, all hiring and work will be done remotely.

Job Postings

Career Job Postings

Ark Systems Administrator ($53,600 - $82,600 / year)
This is a 100% contract position for one (1) year, with the possibility of extension or career conversion.

Job Description: The incumbent will apply professional concepts and department and campus, medical center or Office of the President policies and procedures to resolve systems problems of moderate scope where analysis of situations or data requires a review of a variety of factors. S/he will perform routine work, with detailed instructions provided on new project and / or more complex assignments and initiatives, and within defined procedures and practices, determines appropriate action.

This position provides Unix systems administration support to the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), an internationally recognized Internet infrastructure research group housed at UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer Center. Primary responsibilities include support for CAIDA's Archipelago (Ark) Project, an integrated facility for communication and coordination of measurement experiments on a growing set of 250+ remote monitoring systems located around the globe. Secondarily, the position may be called upon to assist with support of 15-20 desktops and 20-30 rack mounted servers, data processors, and storage devices. Operating systems requiring support include: Linux/MacOSX (for desktops/laptops) and FreeBSD/Linux (remote monitors and servers).

In addition to working with existing software, this position will write software in scripting languages to address a variety of system administration problems and tasks of moderate scope and complexity. Includes work with complex, advanced systems and networks in a TCP/IP research environment and assistance to users on a wide range of technical challenges. The successful candidate must exercise judgement within generally defined guidelines, practices, and policies; communicate well; and act as an ambassador and liaison to researchers and remote contacts for Ark monitor hosting sites, for some of whom English may be a second language.

This position will prospect and follow up on leads for new hosting sites, coordinate and schedule maintenance and deployment, and help remote contacts diagnose failing monitors.

For project background, visit https://www.caida.org/projects/ark.

Qualifications:
- Proven experience writing and editing scripts of moderate complexity used to perform system maintenance and administration. Knowledge of and programming experience with Unix shell scripting; scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, or Perl; and the SQL database query language.
- Basic knowledge of how to apply technologies and systems to meet business needs. Proven experience administering multiple forms of Unix (BSDs, Linux), including their integration and interoperability.
- Demonstrated knowledge of operating system concepts, low-level networking protocols (TCP, UDP, ICMP), and high- level communication protocols such as HTTP, SSL, and DNS.
- Demonstrated ability to understand and clearly document system performance monitoring and actions that can be taken to improve or correct performance.
- Strong organizational skills for tracking and executing in parallel multistage processes that progress at different rates over long periods of time.
Special Conditions:
- Job offer is contingent upon a satisfactory clearance based on background check results.
To be considered for this position, you must apply through UCSD Job #104471.
Data Administrator (salary commensurate with experience)
Job Description: The incumbent will apply skills as a seasoned, experienced data / information management professional with full understanding of industry practices and campus / medical center / OP and department methodologies, policies and procedures to resolve complex and wide ranging issues where analyses of situations or data requires a review of a variety of factors. S/he will demonstrate competency in selecting methods and techniques to obtain solutions.

The incumbent will act as technical expert for Internet data administration and curation in support of the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) program at UCSD/SDSC.

The duties of this position include hardware and operating system support, use of specialized equipment for data collection, documentation, analysis and curation; account management, software development, research and data presentation. The position supports monitoring of Internet backbone links of 10GE and higher speed to collect traces and security data.

Data and account management duties include integrating hardware components into high speed collection system, implementing, testing, running, and refining data collection software based on environment and research needs, managing disk space and offloading collected data to long-term storage facilities, curating and indexing data including anonym zing or removing any personally identifiable information or other sensitive data, vetting accounts, documenting collection conditions and other meta-data relevant to research use of the data and responding to requests for access and information about CAIDA data.

Systems administration duties include configuration of measurement systems and remote maintenance, with particular attention to maintaining infrastructure and data security. This position interacts with numerous external collaborators including remote monitor site contacts, researchers with whom we share our data, collaborators with whom we share measurement infrastructure, and increased support of other research programmers and group members, visiting researchers, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows with whom the group collaborates on publications and research. This position acts as our primary technical contact for the DHS S&T IMPACT Project.

The primary operating systems are FreeBSD and Linux. Includes working with complex, advanced systems and networks in a TCP/IP research environment.

Conduct light research and analysis of data and metadata as needed. Travel to present results, interact with the Internet measurement and research community and seek potential monitor locations.
- Demonstrated experience with the intricacies of UNIX operating systems, particular FreeBSD and Linux.
- Demonstrated experience and knowledge of key programming languages, in particular: Compiled languages (especially C, C++) and Scripted languages (Perl, Python, Ruby).
- Demonstrated knowledge of/experience with Internet terms and technology, including: Protocols such as TCP/IP, Ipv4, Ipv6, Networking technology such as bandwidth, routing, Data interchanges and data centers entities such as NANOG, IETF.
- Advanced working knowledge of SQL including the ability to design and create complex schemas and queries.
- Must be willing and able to travel.
Job offer is contingent on clear Background Check. For details, see the UCSD Job Posting.
There are currently no open career positions available at this time.

Postdoctoral Research Opportunities

If you have a specific project in mind that you'd like to collaborate with CAIDA on, you are welcome to submit your CV along with any materials (publications, code samples, references, etc) that would help us evaluate you for a postdoctoral research position here. Please send these materials along with a cover letter detailing the specific CAIDA projects in which you have interest to jobs+net.postdocs@caida.org

Graduate Student Internship Projects

Intern applications are currently accepted. In most cases, intern positions involve intensive coding for simulations of network models, and analysis of real network data. Successful interns may be later re-hired as postdocs.

Please also see our list of projects looking for students to see some work we're hoping to get help on.

To apply for graduate student internship projects, send a cover letter (including a brief description of interests and skills) and CV to jobs+net.interns@caida.org

Undergraduate Student Job Postings

There are currently no open positions for the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at this time. We are currently looking for undergraduate students for the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

PacketLab REU

Job description: PacketLab Summer REU

PacketLab is under active development in multiple directions. 1) We want to include more experiments in our toolbox, to both provide the researchers with more off-the-shelf experiments and showcase the capabilities of the interface. 2) We want to have a diverse set of endpoints geographically, potentially running on different platforms. We are looking to port the existing prototype running on Linux to more operating systems, allowing more endpoint operators to participate in the ecosystem. We are all working toward making PacketLab a universal and usable network measurement tool for researchers.

This is a special REU posting from our collaborator at PacketLab. See PacketLab Summer REU posting and application instructions.

Undergraduate/REU applications for available postings should be submitted through Handshake for consideration.

Proposed Student Projects

We have a list of opportunities for students to participate in CAIDA research projects. We hope these projects looking for students can attract those interested in working at the forefront of Internet development, measurement, modeling, and research.

CAIDA Sabbatical

CAIDA supports a sabbatical program for Internet engineers, vendors, researchers, and faculty to take a brief respite from their normal day-to-day engineering, product development, or teaching duties, in order to lend their expertise to the advancement of larger Internet evolution issues.