Lab Administrator

DDN; New York (NY); On-site; USD 95,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

DDN is seeking an experienced Lab Infrastructure Administrator to oversee the setup, maintenance, security, and day-to-day operation of a technical/research lab environment. You will manage servers, storage systems, networking gear, and lab workstations to ensure high availability and policy compliance.

You will install and configure hardware and software, manage access, monitor performance, troubleshoot issues with vendors, and maintain thorough documentation.

Qualifications

• Experience administering Linux-based lab environments.
• Strong networking fundamentals.
• Familiarity with storage and parallel filesystems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Install, configure, and maintain lab hardware and software.
• Manage user access and permissions.
• Monitor system health and capacity.
• Troubleshoot issues with vendors for RMAs.
• Maintain network diagrams, inventories, and SOPs.
• Implement security policies and access controls.
• Manage backups and disaster recovery procedures.
• Support researchers with environment setup for experiments.
• Track licensing and hardware lifecycle.
• Coordinate lab scheduling and resource allocation.

Skills

Linux admin

Networking

Storage systems

Scripting (Bash, Python)

Virtualization

Monitoring tools

Documentation

Security policies

Backups/DR

Hardware knowledge

Tools

Ansible

Puppet

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)