International Consultant – Cloud Systems Engineering

About the role

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) seeks an experienced consultant to design and implement a scalable, cloud‑based ORYZA simulation system. The solution will support global, high‑resolution rice crop modeling and monitoring, enabling automated, cost‑efficient execution of multi‑season simulations on AWS.

Key responsibilities

• Design AWS architecture (Batch, EC2, S3, IAM) for large‑scale ORYZA simulations.
• Containerize the ORYZA engine using Docker on Linux and create a manifest‑driven execution framework.
• Implement checkpointing, failure detection, recovery, and per‑grid‑cell sequential simulation runners.
• Develop secure client‑facing APIs for data submission, job control, status monitoring, and result retrieval, including authentication and access control.
• Build automated orchestration and scaling pipelines, optimise performance, and apply cost‑efficiency strategies such as spot instances.
• Harden security configurations, set up logging, monitoring, and auditing mechanisms.
• Conduct integration, regression, and system validation testing with model and data teams.
• Produce technical documentation, knowledge‑transfer materials, and an online MRV dashboard.
• Extend the system with scenario management, GHG quantification modules, spatial workflows, and reporting capabilities.

Required profile

• Proven experience designing and operating large‑scale cloud computing solutions for scientific or environmental applications.
• Strong background in containerisation, API development, and automated workflow orchestration.
• Ability to work independently and collaborate with multidisciplinary research teams.

Required skills

• AWS services (Batch, EC2, S3, IAM)
• Docker and Linux environments
• API design and implementation
• Authentication and access‑control mechanisms
• Job orchestration and scaling (e.g., spot instances)
• Monitoring, logging, and security hardening
• Performance optimisation for parallel simulations