HPC Systems Engineer III – Cloud & Automation (Remote)

Boston University; Boston, Northern (MA, KY); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Time Off

Retirement plan

Tuition assistance

Wellness resources

Job summary

Boston University Information Services & Technology (IS&T) seeks a Research Computing Systems Engineer III to operate and grow the high-performance computing (HPC) environment supporting research across disciplines. You will maintain a 1,000+ node Linux cluster, manage the Grid Engine scheduler, and deploy a secure tiCrypt-based environment with Slurm.

The role emphasizes automation, end-to-end system ownership, and collaboration with senior engineers.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of relevant work experience with a bachelor's degree, relevant post-secondary education, or a combination of these two.
• Linux systems administration experience, including OS patching, upgrades, and security maintenance.
• Experience programming in a Linux environment, preferably Bash and Python.
• Experience in multiple languages such as Perl or C is a plus.
• Ability to work with configuration management systems (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef) and revision control systems (e.g., Git).
• Hands‑on experience and understanding of Linux virtualization and containerization technologies (e.g., KVM, OpenStack, OpenNebula, Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong communication, problem-solving, and teamwork skills.

Responsibilities

• Operate, maintain, and optimize the University's production HPC cluster, including a 1,000+ node bare-metal Linux deployment, the Grid Engine (SGE) scheduler, and GPFS (IBM Storage Scale) parallel file system, to keep research computing services reliable and performant.
• Contribute to the build, deployment, and operations of a new NIST 800-171–compliant secure research computing environment built on tiCrypt, including a Slurm workload manager.
• Help improve monitoring, observability, and configuration management using CI/CD pipelines, Ansible, Git, and related automation tools.
• Automate provisioning, deployment, and routine operations across the full stack, from bare metal through services.
• Identify, diagnose, and resolve complex system, storage, network, and performance issues.
• Contribute to technical documentation and share your expertise with colleagues and the research community.

Skills

Linux admin

Bash

Python

Perl/C

Automation tools

Git

CI/CD

Containers

Orchestration

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Boston University Information Services & Technology (IS&T) seeks a Research Computing Systems Engineer III to operate and grow the high-performance computing (HPC) environment supporting research across disciplines. You will maintain a 1,000+ node Linux cluster, manage the Grid Engine scheduler, and deploy a secure tiCrypt-based environment with Slurm.

The role emphasizes automation, end-to-end system ownership, and collaboration with senior engineers.