Vacant Position – Senior Storage Engineer

Contract type: Permanent
Job Level: Skilled / Middle Management
Work Location: Cape Town, Western Cape
Closing Date: 27 February 2026

The National Research Foundation (NRF) supports and promotes research and human capital development through funding, the provision of National Research Facilities and science outreach platforms and programmes to the broader community in all fields of science and technology, including natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities.

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) spearheads South Africa·s activities in the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope, commonly known as the SKA, in engineering, science and construction. SARAO is a National Facility managed by the National Research Foundation and incorporates radio astronomy instruments and programmes such as the MeerKAT telescope in the Karoo, the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in Gauteng, the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (AVN) programme in nine African countries as well as the associated human capital development and commercialisation endeavours Oversees the design, implementation, and management of an organization’s data storage infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance, reliability, and security.

This includes maintaining physical and virtual storage systems, configuring data redundancy, support disaster recovery, monitor capacity usage and ensuring consistent access to business-critical information.

Key Responsibilities:
* Contributing to the development of long-term storage strategies
* Staying abreast of emerging technologies
* Driving innovation in storage solutions.
* Maintaining comprehensive documentation of storage configurations, processes, and procedures generating reports on storage utilization and performance.

Key Requirements:
Qualification:
* B.Tech/B.Sc (Comp Sci or related field) with 13+ years; OR
* B.Eng/B.Sc Hons (Comp Sci or related field) with 8+ years; OR

Experience:
6 years of relevant experience includes:
experience in storage system administration preferably in a high-performance computing environment
or
engineer role coupled with further education or training in system administration

Knowledge:
* Deep knowledge of storage technologies (SAN, NAS, cloud storage, etc.)
* storage protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS)
* storage management tools
* Linux system installation, configuration and administration
* Operating systems (Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, etc.)
* Security (intrusion detection, data backup/recovery)
* Scripting (Python, C C++ Programming Language)
* Databases (SQL etc.)
* Hardware (server hardware, storage systems and other related components)
* Infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef)
* Distributed monitoring and alerting (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic)
* Distributed logging (e.g., ELK stack)
* Deployment (e.g., MaaS, FAI)
* Virtualisation and containerisation (e.g., Openstack, proxmox, Docker)
* Continuous integration (e.g., Jenkins, Buildbot, Github Actions)
* Distributed Storage (e.g., Ceph, Lustre, MinIO)
* Knowledge of high-performance computing infrastructure
* Knowledge of Ethernet networks

Information:
The website www.nrf.ac.za provides more details on the NRF initiatives and activities.

Applications:
Applicants should submit a comprehensive CV by logging to https://ess.nrf.ac.za/Account/Recruitment and apply online. Applications should be accompanied by a letter of motivation indicating the applicant􀂷s suitability for the position. The names and contact details of at least three referees should be provided.

Closing Date: 27 February 2026

The NRF offers a challenging career and competitive remuneration package which is commensurate with qualifications and experience.

The NRF is committed to employment equity and redress and the appointment to the position will be made in line with the NRF Employment Equity Plan.

The NRF reserves the right not to make an appointment.

Correspondence will be sent to short-listed candidates only