Lab Administrator

Ddn; Columbia (MD); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Ddn is seeking a Lab Operations Engineer to own the setup, maintenance, security, and day-to-day operation of a technical/research lab environment including servers, storage, networking, and lab workstations. You will ensure high availability, performance, and compliance with organizational policies while enabling researchers and engineers to run experiments and benchmarks with minimal friction.

Responsibilities include installing/configuring hardware and software, managing access, monitoring

Qualifications

• Strong Linux administration experience (Ubuntu/RHEL/CentOS).
• Networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, VLANs, bonding/LACP).
• Experience with storage systems (SAN/NAS, Lustre/GPFS a plus).
• Scripting ability (Bash, Python) for automation.
• Familiarity with virtualization/containerization (KVM, Docker).
• Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus/Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix).
• Understanding of hardware components (CPUs, NUMA, PCIe).
• Good documentation and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Set up, maintain, secure, and operate the lab environment (servers, storage, networking, workstations).
• Install, configure, and maintain lab hardware and software components.
• Manage user access and permissions across lab systems.
• Monitor system health, performance, and capacity.
• Troubleshoot issues and coordinate with vendors for support/RMAs.
• Maintain documentation, SOPs, and asset inventories.
• Implement and enforce security policies (patching, firewall rules).
• Manage backups, DR procedures, and data retention policies.
• Assist researchers/engineers with environment setup for experiments and testing.
• Track licensing, warranties, and hardware lifecycle.

Skills

Linux administration

Networking fundamentals

Storage systems

Scripting (Bash, Python)

Virtualization/Containerization

Monitoring tools

Hardware knowledge

Documentation & communication

Tools

Docker

KVM

Job description

Role Summary
Responsible for the setup, maintenance, security, and day-to-day operation of a technical/research lab environment (servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and lab-issued workstations), ensuring high availability, performance, and compliance with organizational policies.

Key Responsibilities

• Install, configure, and maintain lab hardware (servers, storage arrays, NICs, switches) and software (OS images, drivers, monitoring tools)

• Manage user access, accounts, and permissions across lab systems

• Monitor system health, performance, and capacity (CPU, memory, storage, network utilization)

• Troubleshoot hardware/software issues and coordinate with vendors for support/RMAs

• Maintain documentation: network diagrams, asset inventories, configuration baselines, SOPs

• Implement and enforce security policies (patching, firewall rules, access controls)

• Manage backups, disaster recovery procedures, and data retention policies

• Support researchers/engineers with environment setup for experiments, benchmarks, or testing (e.g., provisioning compute nodes, storage volumes, network configs)

• Track licensing, warranties, and hardware lifecycle (procurement to decommissioning)

• Coordinate lab scheduling/resource allocation if shared across teams

Required Skills / Qualifications

• Strong Linux administration experience (Ubuntu/RHEL/CentOS)

• Networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, VLANs, bonding/LACP, basic troubleshooting)

• Experience with storage systems (SAN/NAS, parallel filesystems like Lustre/GPFS a plus)

• Scripting ability (Bash, Python) for automation

• Familiarity with virtualization/containerization (KVM, Docker) is a plus

• Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus/Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix)

• Understanding of hardware components (CPUs, NUMA architecture, PCIe, NICs/RDMA)

• Good documentation and communication skills

Nice to Have

• Experience with HPC/AI infrastructure (InfiniBand, RDMA, GPU clusters)

• Experience with configuration management (Ansible, Puppet)