Job Description

Your responsibilities

Are you eager to apply your engineering skills to support groundbreaking research at the world's largest particle physics laboratory? CERN take part!

We are part of the Tools and Services section in CERN's Scientific Information Service, an agile and high-performing team working at the intersection of research and technology. Our stack includes Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Python, and OpenSearch on the back end, with ReactJS on the front end. We actively contribute to open-source projects and collaborate closely with the CERN Information Technology department.

As a Platform Engineer you will contribute to the operation of the different services in the section (including INSPIRE, CERN Analysis Preservation), live systems with thousands of users every year, high throughput REST APIs, and a state-of-the-art UX. The role will consist of working closely with our collaborators from different institutions to maintain, support and deploy services and tools that strive to help the research community. Many challenges and opportunities are bound to match some of your engineering interests and strengths!

Your profile

Skills:

Mandatory skills and experience:

• Previous work on online production web services.
• Deep understanding and extensive experience with Linux systems.
• Extensive experience of container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes preferred).
• Comfortable with version control systems (Git and GIthub preferred).
• Proficient with Docker and Docker Compose: Able to write Compose files and Multi-stage Dockerfiles.
• Exposure to Helm and Helm Charts.
• Extensive knowledge and practical experience on Prometheus and Grafana.

Skills and experience considered an asset:

• Experience with Continuous Delivery solutions such as ArgoCD.
• Hand-on experience with Continuous Integrations platforms like Github Actions/Workflows.
• Practical experience with RDMS, specially PostgreSQL.
• Exposure to ElasticSearch, OpenSearch or Solr.
• Experience with HAProxy.
• Basic knowledges of Kustomize.
• Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.

Eligibility criteria:

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State.
• By the application deadline, you have a maximum of two years of professional experience since graduation in Computer science (or a related field) and your highest educational qualification is either a Bachelor's or Master's degree.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.
• Applicants without University degree are not eligible.
• Applicants with a PhD are not eligible.

Additional Information

Job closing date: 23.10.2025 at 23:59 CEST.

Contract duration: 24 months, with a possible extension up to 36 months maximum.

Working hours: 40 hours per week

Target start date: 01-November-2025

Job reference: RCS-SIS-TS-2025-189-GRAE

Field of work: Software Engineering and IT

What we offer

• A monthly stipend ranging between 5196 and 5716 Swiss Francs (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN's comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: installation grant; family, child and infant allowances; payment of travel expenses at the beginning and end of contract.
• 30 days of paid leave per year.
• On-the-job and formal training at CERN as well as in-house language courses for English and/or French.

About us

At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.