A Summary of the Workshop on Training and Sustaining Research Computing Systems Professionals - A Path to a Profession

Currently high performance computing institutions have a difficult time finding and retaining qualified systems staff, and as HPC becomes more ubiquitous and more institutions stand up large computational and storage systems, this shortage will become worse. "The use of HPCs [sic] is growing very rapidly in the academic world and also expanding into businesses and government. Its use is becoming more and more integrated into the culture, much like the expansion of personal computers from the 1980s onward."[14] Due to this expansion and the specialized nature of the field, the recruitment and retention of research computing staff is reaching a crisis. A workshop was held in March, 2017 where attendees addressed the research computing systems staffing issues. These issues largely centered around lack of standardized job descriptions in research computing, inability to properly compensate specialized staff, no clear career path for research computing systems professionals, few opportunities for professional development for systems staff, and ineffective recruitment of staff at a junior level. A set of recommendations and next steps were defined and a report was produced for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Internet2 organization.[11].