IT Support Manager

Located on the Paris-Saclay plateau, about 20 kilometers from the capital, the SOLEIL synchrotron is one of France's leading research facilities. Since it began operating in 2008, it has served the national and international scientific communities. Research conducted at SOLEIL covers a wide range of scientific and industrial fields — including physics, biology, chemistry, materials science, environmental science, Earth sciences, and cultural and natural heritage — all connected to current societal challenges. Experiments carried out on the beamlines rely on the use of synchrotron light emitted by electrons accelerated to nearly the speed of light within a storage ring. SOLEIL is jointly supervised by the CNRS and the CEA and offers its staff a dynamic, innovative, multidisciplinary, and international working environment.

In order to remain competitive in the global context of large-scale research instruments and to develop scientific and technological solutions meeting major societal challenges, SOLEIL is undertaking a major upgrade of its accelerators and beamlines ("SOLEIL II"), currently allotted a budget of €50M for detailed design. As part of these scientific and technical modernizations, SOLEIL has initiated an ambitious evolution program for its Information System architecture, with the Systems & Network Infrastructure overseen by the ISI group as a key pillar.

The Infrastructure and IT Support Group (ISI) comprises around twelve employees and is responsible for all network infrastructure, application hosting, experimental data storage, and high-performance computing resources. Its core mission is to define technical solutions, manage implementation projects, handle ongoing operations, and provide support for administrative, scientific, and technical users at SOLEIL.

The IT Support Manager works within the Accelerators and Engineering Division and reports to the ISI Group Manager.

The role involves leading, coordinating, and overseeing daily user support activities while ensuring high-quality service delivery. Responsibilities include managing contracts and services required for the provision of IT support at SOLEIL, regularly analyzing outcomes to identify areas for technical and organizational improvement (procedures, user documentation, training, etc.), and managing the client workstation fleet throughout its lifecycle (defining standard configurations, internal allocation policy, deployment and inventory tools).

Other shared IT resources under this role’s scope include videoconferencing equipment for meeting and training rooms, copiers, and self-service workstations. All responsibilities are performed in close collaboration with other IT teams within the Accelerators and Engineering Division and the Information Systems Strategy Directorate for information security and project development aspects.

Context and missions

-Lead IT support technicians, handling resources, scheduling, and training needs to ensure continuity of support services.

• Define and optimize procedures for users and support staff, ensuring compliance.

• Help identify and analyze incidents/malfunctions and propose functional or technical improvements when appropriate.

• Share best practices for SOLEIL’s Information System use and communicate these effectively.

• Participate in the development of dashboard, monitoring, and activity management tools (e.g., JIRA dashboards, weekly reporting).

• Anticipate changes and their business impacts on the IS and promote them through advisory and communication actions.

• Define the hardware/software configuration for standard workstations in coordination with other infrastructure/application teams and business representatives.

• Organize and oversee the workstation lifecycle (procurement, deployment, updates, reuse, recycling).

• Analyze service quality delivered to users.

• Maintain and utilize knowledge bases appropriately.

• Implement specific training actions for users.
• Stay up to date with technical developments in the field.

Profile

Engineering degree (Bac+5 minimum) with a specialization in IT and at least 10 years’ experience in user support.

Working conditions

The role requires participation in continuous service and regular on-call duty, accounting for around 15% of working time.

Benefits :

• 26 days of paid vacation + up to 2 additional split days + 23 RTT (reduction of working time) days per full year of work, based on a 40-hour work week.
• Mandatory health insurance (basic plan) costs €19.35 per month for the employee (with an employer contribution of €174.15, corresponding to 90% of the premium), covering household members (spouse/partner + children).
• We also offer an optional supplementary health plan for €26.69 per month covering your household (spouse/partner + children).
• Access to a provident scheme that supplements the benefits of the mandatory French Social Security system, which are often insufficient. It compensates for loss of income in case of inability to work, ensuring the standard of living of the insured and their family in difficult circumstances: death, incapacity for work, or disability resulting from illness or accident.
• Possibility to open a Time Savings Account (CET) after one year of seniority.
• On-site corporate catering at SOLEIL, with subsidized meals.
• Family-related benefits depending on individual situations: family allowance supplement, additional days off under certain circumstances, marriage and birth bonuses, etc.
• Social and cultural activities offered by SOLEIL’s Social and Economic Committee (CSE).