Job Description

Data Support Analyst

Primary Purpose: To support data infrastructure and data centered applications as integral parts of the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) ( ), and its flagship project Global Water Futures (GWF) ( ) program.

Nature of Work: A member of the GIWS/GWF Data Management team and under the supervision of the Data Team Lead.

Typical Duties or Accountabilities: As a full-time employee working within GIWS/GWF Data Management team and under the supervision of the DM Team Lead, your main duties will include:

• Becoming fully knowledgeable on the workings of our existing and future telemetry systems of our network of observatories, and the various processes by which near real-time data is acquired and deposited into our relational COTS database system (WISKI), and helping to add detailed documentation on these workings;
• Ability to detect, troubleshoot, and back-propagate missing data whenever outages occur at any one of several stages in the telemetry systems (especially upon notification by a technician);
• Adding and maintaining highly detailed records on observatory networks, sites, stations, journal and dataset publications, etc. into the GWFNet Data Catalogue (

), and participating in design discussions of new forms of metadata records as required; * Applying computer programming skills (with the help and guidance of the DM Team Lead and field technicians as appropriate to the task) to assist with the maintenance, extension, and improvement of existing technologies and the implementation and integration of new technologies and initiatives as needed;

• Contributing to the DM team's Wiki pages and other online content;
• Helping to ensure that the GWF Projects comply with Data Management Plans (DMPs) submitted at project inception;
• Assisting researchers in following best practices and standards for long-term data stewardship, including backup, efficiency of storage utilization and reduction of redundancy;
• Actively participating in biweekly Data Management meetings;
• Ensuring that stored data remains readily accessible to internal and external stakeholders;
• Becoming familiar with large but well-known, important datasets, and helping to identify opportunities for sharing these across the Projects towards efficiency and massive reduction of duplication;
• Becoming familiar with our comprehensive GWF Data Policy and building strong internal relationships with project researchers and stakeholders and giving advice on complying with the Data Policy; and,
• Participating in the development and delivery of Data Management webinars, posters, and presentations on data management best practices, our data infrastructure, and the appropriate and efficient use of our HPC computing resources.

Additional Duties:

In addition, the Team Lead may request other duties to be performed from time to time, as required. These include:

• Assisting project stakeholders in organizing and preparing their data for submission into federated repositories (such as FRDR), ensuring completeness of metadata prior to curator review;
• Responding to inquiries and requests for subsets of data from large datasets;
• Helping with the management of high-performance computing (HPC) systems (especially Compute Canada account management and Copernicus access requests);
• Analyzing information on monthly usage reports to identify users whose storage utilization becomes significantly above quota (in keeping with Compute Canada Quota Policy)
• Helping with regular checks that telemetry systems are operating and depositing real-time data (WISKI database

public sign on is with "public" and "public"); and, * Helping with regular monitoring of disk drive space on large internal storage systems.

Education and Experience: A Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a field related to hydrology and/or environmental science with strong computer science skills is required. Training in Linux, SQL databases, Python and/or other programming languages, and cloud computing are considered to be strong assets.

Skills:

• Absolutely must possess an always-friendly, positive attitude with the ability to work independently and demonstrated ability to work well in a team setting (proposing and defending own ideas while graciously accepting ideas from others)
• Must possess a keen willingness and affinity to learn
• Excellent math, problem-solving, and analytical skills
• Excellent computer skills in general
• Must be familiar with relational database design and systems, database technology, and data analysis (e.g., MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Must have working knowledge and at least some experience with Linux
• Must have some computer programming and scripting experience (e.g., C/C++, Python, Java, C#; Bash)
• Ability to propose commonsense approaches to difficult challenges (e.g., troubleshooting telemetry data outages, ameliorating disk storage shortages, proposing metadata templates); able to work in an imperfect context with iterative improvement
• Excellent documentation and communication skills
• Ability to turn on "being meticulous", e.g. when entering records into GWFNet or when helping to create README files and other metadata for data publication submissions into, e.g., the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR)

Assets:

Any of the following skills would be considered strong assets:

• MATLAB/R (strong asset)
• ASP.NET/C# (strong asset)
• Fieldwork experience
• Experience with geographical location data
• Experience with Virtual Machines (VMs)
• Experience with Windows Server 2016, 2019, (2022)
• Experience with Cloud Computing
• Experience with HPC clusters
• Working knowledge of NoSQL databases
• Knowledge of computer networking concepts

Inquiries regarding this position can be directed to Michelle Martel-Andre at

Department: Global Inst for Water Security
Status: Term with the possibility of extension
Employment Group: ASPA
Full Time Equivalent (FTE): 1.0
Salary: The salary range, based on 1.0 FTE, is $49,301.00 - 77,033.00 per annum. The starting salary will be commensurate with education and experience.
Salary Family (if applicable): Information Technology
Salary Phase/Band: Phase 1
Posted Date: 10/18/2022
Closing Date: 11/28/2022
Number of Openings: 1
Work Location: On Campus

The successful applicant will be required to provide the following current verification(s) where 'Yes' is indicated below. Further information is available at:

Criminal Record Check: Not Applicable
Driver's License and Abstract Check: Not Applicable
Education/Credential Verification: Not Applicable
Vulnerable Sector Check: Not Applicable

Please review the University of Saskatchewan's for faculty, staff and students in consideration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University believes equity, diversity, and inclusion strengthen the community and enhance excellence, innovation and creativity. We are dedicated to recruiting individuals who will enrich our work and learning environments. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority. We are committed to providing accommodations to those with a disability or medical necessity. If you require an accommodation in order to participate in the recruitment process, please notify us and we will work together on the accommodation request. The University of Saskatchewan's main campus is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Metis. We pay our respects to the First Nations and Metis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with one another. Together, we are uplifting Indigenization to a place of prominence at the University of Saskatchewan.