HPC Architect

AbbVie•Chicago, IL

6h•$109,500 - $208,500

About The Position

AbbVie Information Research’s Scientific and Cloud Computing team is seeking a highly motivated High Performance Computing (HPC) Architect to provide technical leadership for scientific and R&D computing environments. The role architects and evolves on-premises, cloud, and hybrid HPC platforms, including compute, GPU, networking, storage, workload management, containers, automation, security, and scientific software services. The HPC Architect guides the design, implementation, lifecycle management, and support of secure, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solutions. The role partners with R&D stakeholders and promotes collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement across scientific computing environments.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related field and 7 years of experience; or a master’s degree and 6 years of experience; or a PhD and 2 years of experience.
Experience in application program development at the applicable level for the selected education path.
Leadership experience, including the ability to guide, collaborate with, and influence technical teams, projects, and workstreams within and outside the organizational structure.
Ability to balance technical depth with people leadership and stakeholder management.
Expert knowledge of Linux, HPC compute and GPU architectures, CPU/memory/NUMA/PCIe design, MPI, NVIDIA GPUs, CUDA, MIG, node provisioning, firmware, drivers, and hardware lifecycle management.
Strong experience with Slurm, including partitions, queues, scheduling policies, resource management, GPU scheduling, accounting, troubleshooting, and performance optimization.
Strong knowledge of HPC networking, including Mellanox/NVIDIA InfiniBand, RDMA, Aruba switching, Ethernet, VLANs, routing, segmentation, subnet management, monitoring, and low-latency communications.
Experience with high-performance and distributed storage, including Weka or comparable platforms, Lustre, NFS, CIFS/SMB, storage gateways, quotas, permissions, data movement, replication, backup, archival, and recovery.
Experience integrating Active Directory or equivalent identity services with SSH, SSSD, sudo, service accounts, security groups, filesystem permissions, and least-privilege access models.
Experience with Apptainer/Singularity, Docker-compatible workflows, container security, reproducibility, GPU/MPI enablement, image management, and scientific software environments using modules, compilers, Python, R, CUDA, and related dependencies.
Experience supporting interactive research platforms such as Posit Workbench, Posit Connect, Jupyter, or comparable tools, including integration with Slurm, GPUs, identity services, storage, and software environments.
Experience architecting cloud and hybrid HPC solutions, including networking, security, identity, provisioning, storage, autoscaling, infrastructure as code, workload placement, cost management, monitoring, and lifecycle operations.
Strong scripting, automation, and DevOps skills.
Knowledge of observability, centralized logging, alerting, incident response, root-cause analysis, capacity planning, performance engineering, cybersecurity, vulnerability management, encryption, patching, and access governance.
Experience creating architecture diagrams, technical standards, operating models, runbooks, migration plans, lifecycle strategies, and executive-level recommendations.
Experience working in Data Science, Life Sciences, or the pharmaceutical industry in regulated or enterprise IT environments.

Nice To Haves

Work experience in the pharmaceutical industry.

Responsibilities

Serve as technical architect for AbbVie IR’s on-premises, cloud, and hybrid HPC scientific-computing environments, covering architecture, standards, software and hardware lifecycle, proof-of-concept evaluation, capacity planning, and cost management.
Architect and continuously evolve scientific HPC computing platforms and their operational and maintenance processes.
Design, implement, and support HPC compute, networking, and storage infrastructure.
Administer and optimize Slurm workload management, including partitions, queues, priorities, fair-share, reservations, resource limits, GPU scheduling, accounting, job troubleshooting, performance tuning, and integration with Posit and other research platforms.
Establish secure, reproducible container and scientific software environments using Apptainer/Singularity, Docker-compatible workflows, environment modules, compilers, MPI, CUDA, Python, R, and application dependencies.
Assist with architecture and support of Posit Workbench, Posit Connect, Posit Package Manager, and related analytics platforms, integrating them with Slurm, Active Directory, storage, GPUs, and scientific software.
Implement secure identity and access management in accordance with AbbVie security SOPs and applicable industry standards, and architect, implement, and support vulnerability-management and remediation processes.
Lead automation of provisioning, configuration, patching, testing, monitoring, remediation, and lifecycle activities.
Maintain observability metrics, architecture diagrams, inventories, dependency maps, configuration standards, runbooks, support procedures, and end-of-life plans; address technical debt, operational risks, and capacity constraints.
Lead development of appropriate reporting and monitoring tools and dashboards.
Lead design and incident reviews, vendor engagements, proofs of concept, capacity planning, and implementation governance; provide technical direction and mentorship to engineering and partner teams.
Partner with R&D to create appropriate solutions for research workloads.