HPC Linux System Administrator

MRI Technologies; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

MRI Technologies is seeking an HPC Linux System Administrator to join the Johnson Space Center team in Houston, TX. The role focuses on administering an on-premises HPC cluster, including the job scheduler and parallel filesystem, and enabling users to run software environments via containers.

You will implement CI/CD workflows on HPC nodes, collaborate with NASA personnel, and maintain systems while ensuring security and reliability for mission-critical workloads.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent certification in a related field, typically with a minimum of 5 years of experience
• Hands-on experience administering HPC job schedulers (Slurm, PBS/Torque, or LSF) including configuration, accounting, and troubleshooting
• Hands-on experience administering high-speed parallel filesystems (Lustre or GPFS/Spectrum Scale) in an HPC setting
• Experience with containers in HPC (Apptainer/Singularity, Podman) for packaging user environments
• Experience building and supporting CI/CD workflows on HPC clusters and run nodes
• Experience with system configuration management and monitoring/alerting

Responsibilities

• Administer HPC job scheduler (Slurm, PBS/Torque, or LSF) including configuration, accounting, and node state management
• Manage high-speed parallel filesystem (Lustre or GPFS/Spectrum Scale) administration
• Help users bring their own software environments into the cluster via HPC containers
• Build out CI/CD that runs on cluster run nodes and interfaces with Jacamar CI/CD tooling

Skills

HPC administration

Linux system administration

CI/CD in HPC

Container environments

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Slurm

PBS/Torque

LSF

Lustre

GPFS/Spectrum Scale

Apptainer/Singularity

GitLab CI/CD

Job description

Every major NASA human spaceflight program - ISS, Orion, SLS, Commercial Crew, the Human Landing System, and Moon Base - runs analysis through the Flight Sciences Laboratory (FSL) at NASA's Johnson Space Center. That's 700+ machines, 26,000 cores, more than 10 petabytes of storage, and over 1,000 engineers and scientists who count on it every day. MRI Technologies supports NASA under the JETS II contract and is hiring an HPC Linux System Administrator to join the team that runs and improves this cluster. You'll administer the job scheduler and parallel filesystem, help users bring their own software environments into the cluster with HPC containers, build out CI/CD that runs on cluster run nodes (including Jacamar), and work side by side with the people behind NASA's human spaceflight mission. This is a hands-on, on-premises HPC role - not a public-cloud, DevOps-only, or Kubernetes-only position.

Based onsite at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. Fully remote will be considered for the right candidate with strong, demonstrated HPC administration experience.

What We Are Looking For

Required - Core HPC Experience (Must Have)

• Hands-on, production experience ADMINISTERING an HPC job scheduler such as Slurm, PBS/Torque, or LSF (hard requirement). That means running the scheduler itself - partition/QOS configuration, accounting, node states, and troubleshooting failed or stuck jobs - not only submitting jobs to it.
• Hands-on, production experience ADMINISTERING a high-speed parallel filesystem such as Lustre or GPFS/Spectrum Scale (hard requirement). General NAS/SAN/NFS storage administration is not a substitute.
• Qualifying experience can come from any organization - a NASA center, a DOE or federal lab, a university/research computing center, another government agency, or private industry - and under any job title.
• At least 5 years of Linux system administration in on-premises, bare-metal, or cluster/research-computing environments, including at least 2 years of HPC administration. Cloud-only or DevOps-only backgrounds (for example, managing EC2/AKS/EKS without on-prem HPC cluster experience) do not meet this requirement.

Required - General

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent certification in a related field, typically with a minimum of 5 years of experience
• Experience using containers (e.g., Apptainer/Singularity, Podman) in an HPC setting - packaging and running user environments, including older OS or package versions, on a shared cluster rather than for traditional microservices
• Experience building and supporting CI/CD workflows, ideally ones that run on HPC clusters and run nodes
• Experience with system configuration management
• Experience with system monitoring and alerting
• Strong problem-solving, planning, and communication skills
• Works well in a collaborative team environment
• Must be able to provide proof of U.S. Citizenship or U.S. Permanent Residency and complete a U.S. government background investigation (required for this NASA contract - see Important Information below).

Preferences

• Experience with Red Hat-based Linux distributions (RHEL, Rocky, Alma)
• Familiarity with InfiniBand high-speed networking
• Experience with cluster provisioning tools such as xCAT or Warewulf
• Experience with Ansible and/or Foreman for configuration management
• Experience with log consolidation and monitoring tools, and with Git/GitLab (including CI/CD pipelines)
• Familiarity with Jacamar (https://gitlab.com/ecp-ci/jacamar-ci) or comparable tooling for running CI/CD jobs against HPC clusters and run nodes
• Experience applying AI in sysadmin work - for example, integrating AI tooling into operational workflows, automation, or user-facing HPC jobs
• MPI workflow and administration experience (e.g., Open MPI, MPICH, Intel MPI)
• Package management and environment modules experience (e.g., Lmod/Environment Modules, SPACK, EasyBuild)
• Knowledge of NASA security mechanisms (security plans, POAMs, ATOs, Risk Assessments)

This position has been posted at multiple levels. Depending on your experience and business needs, we may consider candidates at any level for which the position is advertised.

As we are a Federal Contractor, most positions require the employee to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government background investigation. MRI also completes a pre-screening background check for anyone offered employment.