Research Systems Administrator-HPC III

Weill Cornell Medical College•New York, NY

3d•$157,800 - $172,000•Onsite

About The Position

Resolves critical technical problems and takes lead in mentoring junior staff. Designs complex architectural solutions for a growing and adaptive computational environment. Regularly interfaces with lateral technical and research groups to assist in their endeavors. This role acts as a senior technical leader and architect for institutional research computing platforms. This role is responsible for the design, evolution, and operation of large-scale HPC, storage, and hybrid computing environments supporting data-intensive research across multiple scientific domains. The position requires deep technical expertise combined with strong collaboration skills, enabling effective partnerships with faculty investigators, research staff, IT colleagues, and external vendors. The Senior HPC Engineer operates with substantial autonomy and plays a key role in shaping the long-term technical direction of research computing platforms.

Requirements

Bachelors of Science degree preferably in a technical field (e.g., computer science, physics, math, chemistry, or engineering)
Approximately 12 years of relevant work experience.
Experience working in a scientific computing environment, particularly in an academic setting is required.
Experience with Infiniband networking is required.
Experience with GPU computing, particularly using the nVidia CUDA toolkit is required.
Experience architecting scientific computing clusters and their associated scheduling systems, such as SGE, PBS, or SLURM is required.
Experience architecting database-backed web applications, particularly managing Shiny services, is required.
Experience with designing secure and compliant scientiﬁc computing clusters and platforms for regulated research data (ex: NIST 800-171 compliant).
Experience with containers (Singularity/Apptainer, Docker), scientific workflow engines and reproducibility and portability concerns.
Experience with configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, etc.), infrastructure as code concepts and CICD-style deployment for platforms.
Experience mentoring junior staff.
High proficiency in the Linux operating system, including scripting languages such as bash, Ruby and Perl.
Proficiency in building, installing, and configuring a variety of open-source Linux software packages, especially with complex dependencies.
High proficiency in at least two programming languages, such as C++ or Java, Perl, Python.
A detailed knowledge of computer hardware, specifically, Peta-scale storage platforms.
Proficiency in HPC filesystems, Lustre, GPFS.
Proficiency of networking concepts and use of tools and protocols such as SSH, DNS, DHCP, and LDAP.
Ability to manage complex vendor relationships.
Demonstrated leadership and mentoring skills to effectively manage and develop staff members.

Responsibilities

Designs the architecture of the department’s Peta-Scale storage infrastructure.
Architects data lifecycle management and storage tiers, including off-site replication to cloud providers.
Develops highly reliable batch scheduling infrastructure.
Designs the architecture of the department’s High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure.
Trains and mentors junior and operational staff in monitoring and troubleshooting cluster performance issues.
Designs and oversees the installation of scientific computing software stacks and research workflows.
Assists in the development of, coordinates, and leads, training events for research users in the efficient use of cluster and storage resources.
Provides and oversees complex technical documentation for the research community.
Directly interfaces with investigators to assess requirements and implement tailored solutions for their problem sets.
Responsible for vendor relations and negotiations of commercial solutions.
Performs other related duties as co-developed with management.