Associate Director - HPC Infrastructure Architect

Novartis India; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 5,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Novartis India in Hyderabad is seeking an experienced HPC Infrastructure Architect to own the reference architecture for compute, storage, interconnect, and data movement across on-premises and cloud environments.

You will translate scientific workloads into sizing, benchmarking, and platform patterns, ensure security and regulatory compliance, and partner with research IT to enable scalable, resilient HPC for a wide range of experiments.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in designing building or operating large-scale HPC environments.
• Proven expertise in HPC platform architecture, capacity planning, and multi-cluster design.
• Strong experience supporting Linux-based compute clusters in enterprise or scientific computing.

Responsibilities

• Own the HPC reference architecture: cluster topologies, CPU and GPU node designs, storage, interconnect, scheduler, and software stack.
• Define workload placement model across dedicated clusters, cloud burst, and AI platforms based on performance, data gravity, cost, and compliance.
• Produce and maintain capacity plans for compute, accelerators, storage and network including power, rack and cooling requirements.
• Establish data-locality and data-movement principles across instruments, storage tiers, archive and cloud.
• Translate requirements into sizing, benchmarking and procurement input, validating feasibility before build.
• Maintain architecture decision records linking HPC choices to outcomes, cost and lifecycle.
• Define interfaces with AI infrastructure for coherent shared assets.
• Ensure designs meet security, quality and regulatory expectations and are operable post-handover.
• Engage scientific communities and research IT partners as trusted architecture contact.
• Coach engineers and analysts, exemplifying Novartis Values and Behaviours.

Skills

HPC architecture

Capacity planning

Linux clusters

Slurm/LSF scheduling

CPU/GPU infrastructure

High-performance storage

InfiniBand/Ethernet

Cloud & on-prem HPC

Data management

Security & regulatory

Job description

Summary

Scientific computing sits at the centre of how Novartis discovers and develops medicines. Cloud & Hosting Services has established AI & HPC Engineering as the single engineering and delivery channel for high-performance computing, and Architecture & Integration owns the target architecture behind it. The HPC Infrastructure Architect is accountable for that architecture: the compute, storage, interconnect, scheduling and data-locality design that scientific workloads run on, on premises and in the cloud. The role translates scientific demand - molecular modelling, imaging and cryo-electron microscopy, genomics, simulation and increasingly AI-adjacent workloads - into capacity models, workload placement principles and platform patterns. It carries the physical dependencies with it: power, rack and cooling envelopes, high-performance storage tiers, network fabric, and the data centre and colocation footprint that a large campus and site transformation programme is reshaping. This is an individual contributor architecture role in which credibility with scientists matters as much as credibility with infrastructure engineers.

About The Role

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the HPC reference architecture: cluster topologies, CPU and GPU node designs, high-performance and tiered storage, interconnect fabric, schedulers and the software stack that supports scientific workflows.
• Define the scientific workload placement model - which workloads run on dedicated clusters, which burst to cloud, and which belong on AI platforms - based on performance, data gravity, cost and compliance.
• Produce and maintain capacity plans for compute, accelerators, storage and network, including the power, rack and cooling requirements that data centre and colocation planning depends on.
• Establish data-locality and data-movement principles across instruments, laboratories, storage tiers, archive and cloud, including replication and recovery approaches for irreplaceable scientific data.
• Translate scientific requirements into sizing, benchmarking and procurement input, and validate feasibility before engineering build.
• Maintain architecture decision records for HPC platform choices, connecting each to scientific outcome, cost and lifecycle consequence.
• Define the interface with AI infrastructure so that shared accelerators, storage and data pipelines are used coherently rather than duplicated.
• Ensure HPC designs meet security, quality and regulatory expectations and are operable by Infrastructure Operations after handover.
• Engage scientific communities and research IT partners as the trusted architecture contact for high-performance computing.
• Coach engineers and analysts, and act as a role model for the Novartis Values and Behaviours.

Essential Requirements

• 8+ years of experience designing, building, or operating large-scale High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments.
• Proven expertise in HPC platform architecture, capacity planning, and multi-cluster infrastructure design.
• Strong experience supporting Linux-based compute clusters in enterprise or scientific computing environments.
• Hands-on knowledge of workload schedulers such as Slurm, LSF, or comparable HPC scheduling technologies.
• Solid understanding of CPU and GPU infrastructure design, performance optimization, and benchmarking methodologies.
• Experience with high-performance storage solutions, parallel file systems, and high-speed networking technologies, including InfiniBand and Ethernet fabrics.
• Knowledge of containerized, reproducible scientific workflows and hybrid or cloud-based HPC environments.
• Familiarity with large-scale data management practices, including data replication, archiving and infrastructure planning (power, cooling, and rack design); experience supporting research or scientific computing communities is highly desirable.

Desirable Requirements

• Able to work fluently with scientists and translate research needs into infrastructure terms; rigorous, evidence-based approach to sizing and benchmarking; long-horizon planning discipline; strong collaboration across engineering, facilities and research organizations.
• Fluent English, written and spoken. Additional languages are an asset.

You’ll receive:

You can find everything you need to know about our benefits and rewards in the Novartis Life Handbook. https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards

Commitment To Diversity And Inclusion

Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams' representative of the patients and communities we serve.

Join our Novartis Network

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Why Novartis:

Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together? https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

Benefits and Rewards:

Learn about all the ways we’ll help you thrive personally and professionally. Read our handbook (PDF 30 MB)