Data Systems Senior Systems Architect/Engineer

Oak Ridge National Laboratory•Oak Ridge, TN

About The Position

The Environmental Sciences Division (ESD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is seeking a Data Systems Senior Systems Architect/Engineer for its Earth Sciences Informatics portfolio. The role designs, deploys, and maintains facility-wide infrastructure supporting high-performance computing (HPC), research, instrumentation, engineering, and operational workloads across a collaborative network of nine DOE National Laboratories for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Facility. It combines national security, scientific research, and infrastructure engineering. The position designs, implements, and maintains data, compute, storage, virtualization, security, and networking infrastructure supporting BER scientific data programs and facilities. As a technical lead on projects spanning the national laboratory complex, the role ensures interoperability, security, and performance while working with partner laboratories. It architects high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions, monitors system health, maintains compliance with DOE orders, NIST 800-53, and FISMA, and automates provisioning and patching. It also supports integration of HPC clusters, AI infrastructure, and storage systems such as NFS, GPFS, and Ceph, while collaborating with diverse teams and mentoring junior staff. The ARM Data Center processes, archives, and distributes atmospheric observations from observatories around the globe, and provides data, computing and AI infrastructure, and analysis tools to the scientific community. The work improves how the community accesses and uses atmospheric and earth science data. Employment at ORNL requires Real ID-compliant identification and the ability to obtain and maintain a federal Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card. New employees must pass a Federal Tier 1 background investigation. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Requirements

Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
At least 5 years of experience in systems engineering, data center operations, or enterprise infrastructure roles.
Strong hands-on experience administering Linux/Unix and Windows Server at scale.
Deep understanding of virtualization technologies such as VMware, KVM, or similar.
Experience with enterprise storage systems, SAN/NAS architectures, and backup/disaster-recovery solutions.
Solid networking knowledge, including TCP/IP, VLANs, routing/switching, and firewalls.
Experience working within federal or DOE cybersecurity compliance frameworks, including NIST 800-53, RMF, or FISMA.
Demonstrated ability to work across distributed, multi-site organizations and manage competing stakeholder priorities.
Excellent troubleshooting, documentation, and communication skills.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a federal PIV card and pass a Federal Tier 1 background investigation.
Visa sponsorship is not available.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting HPC environments or scientific computing infrastructure.
Familiarity with DOE National Laboratory systems, governance, or interlaboratory collaboration models.
Experience with configuration management and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, or Chef.
Relevant certifications such as RHCE, CISSP, VCP, or equivalent.
Experience with container orchestration such as Kubernetes or OpenShift in a research or federal environment.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain facility-wide compute, storage, virtualization, and networking infrastructure supporting DOE BER data programs and facilities.
Serve as technical lead for infrastructure projects coordinated across the national laboratory complex, ensuring facility-wide interoperability, security, and performance.
Work with distributed teams to enable data collection, secure transfer, processing, and distribution.
Architect and support high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions for mission-critical systems.
Collaborate with engineers, scientists, and IT staff at partner national laboratories to align infrastructure strategy with research and operational requirements.
Monitor system performance, capacity, and health, and proactively identify and resolve issues.
Research emerging technologies and design and deploy them for data center operations.
Implement and maintain security controls compliant with DOE orders, NIST 800-53, FISMA, and other applicable federal cybersecurity frameworks.
Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and patching using tools such as Ansible, Puppet, or Terraform.
Support integration of HPC clusters, AI infrastructure, storage systems such as NFS, GPFS, and Ceph, and networking including high-speed interconnects.
Address critical incidents affecting data center operations or interlaboratory connectivity.
Develop and maintain system documentation, standard operating procedures, and disaster-recovery plans.
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to technical excellence and continuous improvement.