Lead HPC / Kubernetes Engineer

Autonomai Recruitment; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Autonomai Recruitment partners with a research-driven financial firm to hire a hands-on engineering leader who will own its on-premises compute platform. The role requires steering architecture, governance and a high-performing team while staying closely involved with code and operations.

The successful candidate will own Kubernetes on bare-metal Linux, drive reliability, and collaborate with researchers to translate workloads into robust infrastructure, balancing strategic direction with

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience engineering and operating large-scale compute environments.
• 5+ years of people management with evidence of developing strong engineers.
• Deep Kubernetes expertise across cluster infrastructure and application behaviour.
• Experience managing bare-metal Linux infrastructure at scale, ideally using RPM-based distributions.
• Practical experience with low-latency systems and performance tuning.
• Strong knowledge of IP networking, routing and network performance.
• Confidence writing Python to automate infrastructure and solve operational problems.
• Experience designing and validating disaster recovery and continuity plans.
• Clear communication and the judgment to connect technical decisions with user needs.

Responsibilities

• Set the architecture and technical direction for the on-premises compute platform.
• Lead and develop the compute engineering team while remaining an active technical contributor.
• Scale and harden Kubernetes and Linux infrastructure for demanding production and research workloads.
• Build automation and establish standards that make environments consistent, reproducible and easier to operate.
• Diagnose performance and reliability issues across applications, Kubernetes, Linux and networking.
• Select and integrate open-source and commercial technologies where they solve the problem.
• Own disaster recovery and business continuity planning for the compute environment.
• Share responsibility for on-call support and planned maintenance.

Skills

Large-scale compute

Team leadership

Kubernetes

Bare-metal Linux

Low-latency systems

Networking

Python automation

Disaster recovery

Clear communication

Tools

Kubernetes

Linux

Python

RPM-based distros

Job description

The most interesting infrastructure problems sit where software meets hardware.

We're partnering with a research-driven financial firm to hire a hands-on engineering leader to own its on-premises compute platform. The platform supports demanding research workloads, with performance, reliability and reproducibility directly affecting how quickly researchers can turn ideas into results.

You'll own the architecture, implementation and governance of the compute environment, while leading the engineers who build and operate it. This role calls for someone who can set technical direction, develop a team and stay close to the code, systems and operational decisions.

The engineering challenge

Build a compute platform that gives researchers and developers reliable access to physical infrastructure, with the automation and consistency they expect from modern software platforms.

Kubernetes runs on bare-metal Linux. That means ownership extends through the stack: cluster architecture, operating systems, physical servers, networking, performance and recovery.

You'll work directly with researchers and application engineers to understand their workloads and translate those requirements into infrastructure that performs reliably.

What you'll own

• Set the architecture and technical direction for the on-premises compute platform.
• Lead and develop the compute engineering team while remaining an active technical contributor.
• Scale and harden Kubernetes and Linux infrastructure for demanding production and research workloads.
• Build automation and establish standards that make environments consistent, reproducible and easier to operate.
• Diagnose performance and reliability issues across applications, Kubernetes, Linux and networking.
• Select and integrate open-source and commercial technologies where they solve the problem.
• Own disaster recovery and business continuity planning for the compute environment.
• Share responsibility for on-call support and planned maintenance.

What we're looking for

• 10+ years of hands-on experience engineering and operating large-scale compute environments.
• 5+ years of people management experience, with evidence of developing strong engineers.
• Deep Kubernetes expertise across cluster infrastructure and application behaviour.
• Experience managing bare-metal Linux infrastructure at scale, ideally using RPM-based distributions.
• Practical experience with low-latency systems and performance tuning.
• Strong knowledge of IP networking, routing and network performance.
• Confidence writing Python to automate infrastructure and solve operational problems.
• Experience designing and validating disaster recovery and continuity plans.
• Clear communication and the judgment to connect technical decisions with user needs.

Your background could be in research computing, high-performance infrastructure, private cloud or another environment where you've owned demanding compute systems.

The opportunity is to shape the platform's architecture, build a strong engineering team and stay directly involved in the work.