1 Opportunities Opportunities for Engineering professionals and interns are *immediately*available. Read on for the details. 2 About Us 2.1 VLEAD
VLEAD is the "Virtual Labs Engineering and Architecture Division" of the Virtual Labs project. VLEAD's mandate is to design and architect the implementation framework for Virtual Labs. Virtual Labs is an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India , under the National Mission on Education through ICT. Its goal is to build labs in engineering and sciences accessible over the web for college and university students. Approximately 180 virtual Labs are being built in twelve institutes across the IIT's at Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Roorkee and NIT Surathkal, College of Engineering Pune, Dayalbagh and Amrita Universities, and IIIT Hyderabad. For more details, please visit *Sakshaat* virtual labs at http://vlab.co.in . We are located at IIIT-H, Gachibowli, Hyderabad but we plan to have some personnel located in IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi. 2.2 VLEAD's role in Virtual Labs The broad role of VLEAD is to form the bedrock of research, systems development and software engineering of the virtual labs. This includes R&D work of designing frameworks to support various aspects of virtual labs like deployment, packaging, distribution, user management, persistence, etc. It also includes engineering the integration of these labs to the frameworks, and finally, supporting those using the labs. VLEAD (earlier called SEVILLE) has already been involved in providing infrastructure and back end engineering services for around 40 teams developing virtual-labs right from the initial days. For this year, this support needs to be scaled up for 180 teams and this requires heavy engineering and framework development. 3 Overview of activities at VLEAD This section illustrates the kind of things we do or will be doing at VLEAD. 3.1 Systems Engineering One of VLEAD's main deliverables will be to provide a cloud of servers for the entire life-cycle of virtual labs, viz., development, testing, hosting and distribution of virtual labs. Technologies, we currently use in the VLEAD systems engineering include Debian GNU/Linux, KVM, Xen, OpenVz, tinydns, Apache, Sqlite, MySQL, iptables, qmail(deepOfix), OpenLDAP(deepOfix), ezmlm(deepOfix), Bash & Python 3.2 Software Engineering VLEAD will design the process of origination of a lab till it is delivered into the vlabs eco-system. There are several APIs present and several more needed for the current growing trend of Virtual labs development. The process keenly follows the principles of SDLC and provides a very efficient software engineering model for the vlabs. The defined process takes care of version control, bug tracker, release mechanism of vlabs. The view of a virtual lab as a software product makes it necessary to employ the above processes and principles of software engineering. Technologies currently used in the software engineering of virtual labs are: Subversion, Ruby on Rails, Redmine, Javascript, Java, C/C++, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, and Python 3.3 Document Engineering VLEAD believes in strong documentation principles for future reference and also as a self explanatory notes for the new ones. In VLEAD, every engineering process and decision is documented and archived. At VLEAD, we extensively use free and open source technologies like \LaTeX, Emacs Org Mode, Subversion, Mediawiki, dot (graphviz), GIMP, and Inkscape and also scripts in emacs, python and makefiles to drive the document generation. 3.4 Outreach Engineering Nothing is worth until it is known to others. An important long term goal of VLEAD is to provide all the engineering support needed to evangelise virtual labs at other colleges, encourage the participation of developers and potential users wherever they are. VLEAD will build frameworks for technical support for holding workshops for developers and field trials. Building a community of users and developers is the only way to sustain the virtual labs. 4 VLEAD deliverables for the next one year The main deliverables of VLEAD are: Framework developmentThe virtual labs framework that has partly been built needs to be completed. Integration180 virtual (simulation) labs need to be integrated onto the virtual labs framework that includes an svn server and a project management portal. Each lab is run by a separate team of lab developers located across the country. HostingThe 180 virtual labs need to be hosted on a single cloud platform from a data centre. MirroringThe hosting site is to be mirrored at a location elsewhere in India. 5 Contract Engineering Positions at VLEAD 5.1 Number of Engineering Positions We have engineering positions open for "Project Systems engineers" and "Project Software Engineers" for those interested in any of the following above areas: framework development, integration, hosting and mirroring of Virtual Labs. Depending on the need and the skill set, the person recruited will be placed at an appropriate level of seniority. All the positions are on contract basis. TypeBasic qualificationSkills S/W Engr.BTech/MTech in any discipline,Demonstrably strong background in preferably CS.programming and S/W Engg. Systems Engr.BTech/MTech in any discipline,Strong background in preferably CS.Systems, design, automation and documentation. Linux and or Windows Qualifications may be relaxed for exceptional applicants. 5.2 Internship opportunities Talented and exceptionally motivated students interested in an internship may also apply. They will be paid a student stipend. 5.3 Additional attributes Enthusiastic, self-driven and highly motivatedThe person should be able to take up an ill-defined problem, and deliver something substantial about it. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills The person should be *very* comfortable in writing technical reports, memo's and other documents. The person should enjoy working within a group. FOSSExperienced with the use of FOSS technologies and appreciative of the FOSS philosophy. InitiativeWilling to cheerfully attend to critical tasks at odd times. 6 Salary Salary is negotiable and will be competitive and commensurate with the candidate's qualifications, experience and skills. 7 Perks Since VLEAD will be located on institute campuses, interns and employees will have the following perks: - Opportunity to attend classes (contingent upon instructor permission) and other academic events (seminars and workshops) on campus. - Free hosting for your own website. - Huge real estate (on the web), shell access and backup options :-) - Friday dutch lunches :-) - Music surround system - Table Tennis 8 Procedure for application EmailPlease email to *j...@virtual-labs.ac.in*with your name on the subject line along with * "Internship" or "Job" *on the subject line. ResumePlease send us a PDF or a url. RefereesWe are interested in the opinion of anyone willing to comment upon your skills and abilities. Please include names of at least one referee in your application. ProjectsPlease include links, if you have them, to any projects that you have contributed or continue to contribute. This would be a big plus for considering you. Coding and/or writing samplesPlease include (as links), if you have them, any samples of code, documentation or technical reports that you have written. _______________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
