\begin{address}
  William Totten \\
  110 Kells Ave \\
  Newark, DE 19711 \\
\end{address}

\today

\begin{address}
  University of Delaware \\
  Network and System Services \\
  413 Academy Street \\
  Newark, DE 19716 \\
\end{address}

\begin{body}
  I am pleased to contact you regarding the
  ``Research HPC Systems Programmer, IT-Network and Systems Services''
  position (Job ID 102057) which recently posted.  I am excited for the
  opportunity and to serve the University of Delaware community.

  The most gratifying experiences in my career were related to
  supporting researchers and High Performance Compute (HPC) clusters.
  An HPC cluster is nothing
  without active research programs using it.  People will only continue
  to use the resource if they are successful.  The design, documentation,
  and education which comes from the HPC support team are critical to the
  success of these research programs.

  I enjoy the challenges which come with working on HPC clusters.
  For example, HPC's have unique monitoring needs.  The sheer number and
  density of components makes hardware failures a constant reality.
  Engineering the systems to avoid data loss, outages, and report on
  failures proactively is one of my strengths.
  Researchers often use software which is not well documented. As a result,
  compiling can be very difficult (especially in the biomedical space).
  I consider it a good day when I can dig into a
  package, figuring it out, and make it work.

  My experience working Moffitt Cancer Center, which is equal parts hospital and
  research center, provided me with a great background to balance the
  needs of an open research organization with security necessary to provide
  services to the biomedical and other industry users which will inhabit the
  STAR Campus.
  Building a cluster that is designed to meet user needs will help keep UD
  at the forefront of cutting edge research. This will help sustain funding
  to the cluster and help to lead the university further down the
  ``Path to Prominence''.

  I am also interested an
  any role the HPC team can play in research oriented data warehouses for
  the university community.  My recent experience with large data warehouses
  gave me a great background in designing different kinds of massively parallel
  systems.  In particular, I have interest in Open Source
  technologies such as Hadoop with Hive/Impala and the lower-cost data
  warehouses like
  GreenPlum and Aster.  I see ``shared nothing'' big data systems as
  a logical next step for a general purpose HPC group.

  Beyond my work with HPC clusters, I am an accomplished system administrator.
  I have extensive knowledge of many UNIX and Linux variants.  I enjoyed
  rolls relating to UNIX security, application/middleware support, and
  architecture.
  My broad experience with
  UNIX/Linux coupled with technologies like VMWare, Nagios, etc. allows
  me to integrate with and help support the non HPC systems relatively
  seamlessly without distracting me from the cluster.
  My favorite aspects of work are designing and building complex systems.
  In my current position, this work is split among multiple people,
  and I am limited to designing solutions for others to build.
  I look forward to the opportunity to begin
  building and implementing again as a Research HPC Systems Programmer.
  For me, the perfect role has a little bit of all of these components.

  Thank you very much for your consideration.  I can be reached anytime via
  email at William.Totten@pobox.com or by phone at (302) 222-9325.
\end{body}

\begin{signature}
  William Totten
\end{signature}

