Scientific Programmer Atmospheric High-Performance Computing

80%-100%, Zurich, temporary

The Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM) is one of ETH Zurich’s competence centres. It will become an extradepartmental centre of ETH starting 2021. C2SM is a joint venture between ETH Zurich, MeteoSwiss, Empa, WSL, and Agroscope. As part of the restructuring, we are increasing competencies and are hiring new staff. One central focus of C2SM consists of providing technical programming support and development for our groups using the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic Weather and Climate Model ICON. C2SM supports both the traditional version running on central processing units (CPUs), as well as the version running on graphical processor units (GPUs). In particular, C2SM, in close collaboration with ETH Zurich, MeteoSwiss, and CSCS drives the further technical development of this model in the area of high-performance computing towards the exascale.

Job description

C2SM is seeking to appoint a Scientific Programmer Atmospheric High-Performance Computing (80-100 %) to extend their activities around technical support and further development of the ICON model. In particular, she/he will:

• Contribute to the further development of the ICON model towards the exascale


• Support short-term requests from the C2SM ICON community comprising technical problems with running, compiling, and debugging code


• Take over longer term technical projects per year assigned from individual C2SM member groups focused on technical model development


• Prepare and conduct technical education courses for the group members of the C2SM community, in collaboration with the other C2SM programmers


• Prepare, conduct, and postprocess the annual working group meetings, in collaboration with the other C2SM programmers

Your profile

You have an MSc or PhD in Atmospheric Science, Physics, Computer Science, or related field. You have relevant experience with weather and climate models and outstanding programming skills in Fortran and possibly Python or C/C++ in a Unix environment. Experience with the ICON model and in high-performance computing, in particular in GPU programming (CUDA, OpenACC), will be considered an advantage. To round off your profile, you are a goal-driven individual used to working independently, but you are also team- and service-oriented enjoying working in a diverse working environment and interested in providing support to students and scientists within a large community.

ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow. Working, teaching and research at ETH Zurich