Senior HPC Storage Engineer

UCLA; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

UCLA is seeking a Senior HPC Storage Engineer to lead design, deployment, and operation of large-scale storage for data-intensive research across campus and federated HPC environments.

You will evaluate emerging storage tech, optimize performance, and build secure storage services spanning campus, cloud, and national collaborations. This role blends architecture with hands-on engineering and requires strong Linux, scripting, and benchmarking skills.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in large-scale storage environments with production storage responsibility.
• Experience with petabyte-scale, federated or HPC/cloud-integrated storage.
• Advanced HPC, data science, and cyberinfrastructure knowledge.
• Experience with scale-out storage architectures and performance tuning.
• Hands-on with Lustre, Ceph, GPFS/Spectrum Scale, or similar.
• Linux admin skills including kernel troubleshooting and networking.
• Scripting in Bash or Python; familiarity with Ansible and Git.
• Identity provider integration (AD/LDAP/OIDC/SAML/Globus).
• Ability to design benchmarks, document results, and communicate findings.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, deployment, and operation of large-scale storage platforms.
• Evaluate storage tech and optimize performance across campus and cloud.
• Develop secure, reliable storage services for distributed environments.
• Contribute to federated data infrastructure for multi-institution research.
• Coordinate with researchers, IT staff, and vendors on storage requirements.
• Manage incident response, capacity planning, and upgrades.

Skills

Petabyte-scale storage

HPC storage design

Linux administration

Scripting (Bash/Python)

Storage benchmarking

Cloud & federated storage

Communication to stakeholders

Project leadership

Education

Bachelor's Degree in CS/Engineering

Master's Degree (Preferred)

PhD (Preferred)

Tools

Lustre

GPFS/Spectrum Scale

Ceph

BeeGFS

MinIO

WekaFS

Ansible

Git

Job description

Special Instructions to Applicants

This position will consider both hybrid and fully remote candidates. On-site presence may be required as needed based on operational, maintenance, or project requirements. Participation in an on-call rotation for emergency hardware and software support is required. Occasional evenings and weekends may be required to support maintenance windows or respond to incidents. Required to accommodate scheduled based on Pacific Standard Time.

Department Summary

Advanced Research Computing melds expert staff and technical infrastructure to amplify and accelerate the impact of UCLA research in the age of networked data and computation. OARC's expertise and resources are available to all UCLA researchers engaged in digital research and scholarship. We work with faculty, student, and postdoctoral researchers; instructors; and staff and administrators. OARC is a relationship-building organization. We enable digital scholarship through collaborations, partnerships, and networked communities to advance cutting-edge research capabilities at UCLA and beyond. OARC supports and enhances the university mission of education, research, and service through the development and execution of innovative and sustainable technology practices, programs, services, infrastructure, policies, and partnerships.

Position Summary

Join UCLA's Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC) and help build the research data infrastructure that powers scientific discovery at UCLA and across a national network of high-performance computing centers. We are seeking a Senior HPC Storage Engineer to lead the design, deployment, and operation of large-scale storage systems supporting data-intensive research, AI/ML, interactive computing, and multi-institutional collaborations.

This senior technical role combines architecture with hands-on engineering. You will evaluate emerging storage technologies, lead deployment of petabyte-scale storage platforms, optimize performance, and develop secure, reliable storage services spanning campus, cloud, and federated HPC environments. As part of UCLA's NSF-supported iDLab initiative, you will help build a national-scale research data infrastructure that enables seamless access to data across geographically distributed computing resources.

At OARC, you will work alongside leading researchers, engineers, and partner institutions while influencing the long-term direction of research cyberinfrastructure at UCLA. This is an opportunity to solve challenging technical problems, work with advanced storage technologies, and make a lasting impact on research computing at both the campus and national levels.

Salary & Compensation

• UCLA provides a full pay range. Actual salary offers consider factors, including budget, prior experience, skills, knowledge, abilities, education, licensure and certifications, and other business considerations. Salary offers at the top of the range are not common. Visit UC Benefit package to discover benefits that start on day one, and UC Total Compensation Estimator to calculate the total compensation value with benefits.

Qualifications

• 7 years or more Experience in research, enterprise, or hyperscale storage environments with responsibility for large-scale production storage services. (Required)
• Large scale storage Experience with petabyte-scale storage, federated storage, multi-site research infrastructure, or HPC/cloud-integrated storage services. (Preferred)
• 1. Advanced knowledge of high-performance computing, data science, and cyberinfrastructure environments supporting large-scale research workloads (Required)
• 2. Demonstrated knowledge of scale-out, parallel, distributed, object, and federated storage architectures, including performance characteristics, consistency models, caching strategies, and operational tradeoffs. (Required)
• 3. Hands-on experience architecting, deploying, operating, or substantially supporting one or more large-scale storage platforms such as Lustre, VAST Data, GPFS/Spectrum Scale, Ceph, BeeGFS, WekaFS, or MinIO. Experience with multiple platforms and petabyte-scale deployments is preferred. (Required)
• 4. Demonstrated experience operating large-scale production storage systems, including monitoring, capacity planning, lifecycle management, upgrades, performance tuning, incident response, backup, replication, and disaster recovery. (Required)
• 5. Advanced Linux systems administration skills, including kernel-level troubleshooting, performance profiling, storage hardware diagnostics, and tuning across InfiniBand, RoCE, and Ethernet fabrics. (Required)
• 6. Demonstrated experience diagnosing storage performance problems across Linux clients, metadata services, storage servers, object services, network fabrics, protocol layers, and application I/O patterns. (Required)
• 7. Proficiency in scripting and automation using Bash, Python, or similar languages; familiarity with configuration management tools such as Ansible and version control such as Git. (Required)
• 8. Experience integrating storage systems with local, campus-wide, and federated identity providers such as Active Directory, LDAP, CILogon, OIDC, SAML, or Globus Auth. (Required)
• 9. Demonstrated ability to design and execute storage benchmarks, validate vendor claims, characterize representative scientific workloads, and document results for engineering and executive audiences. (Required)
• 10. Demonstrated ability to design, operate, or support shared research storage services, including allocation models, user-facing service delivery, large-scale data movement, and escalation support for complex research workflows. (Preferred)
• 11. Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical information clearly to technical staff, researchers, leadership, vendors, and external research and education audiences. (Required)
• 12. Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively, manage competing priorities, lead technical working groups, and sustain production service quality while delivering multi-month projects. (Required)

Education, Licenses, Certifications & Personal Affiliations

• Bachelor's Degree Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computational Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent combination of education and experience. (Required)
• Master's Degree Master's in Computer Science, Computational Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent advanced professional experience. (Preferred) Or
• PhD PhD in Computer Science, Computational Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent advanced professional experience. (Preferred)

Special Conditions for Employment

• Background Check: Continued employment is contingent upon the completion of a satisfactory background investigation.
• Live Scan Background Check: A Live Scan background check must be completed prior to the start of employment.
• This position will consider both hybrid and fully remote candidates. On-site presence may be required as needed based on operational, maintenance, or project requirements. Participation in an on-call rotation for emergency hardware and software support is required. Occasional evenings and weekends may be required to support maintenance windows or respond to incidents. (Required)

Schedule

8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m

Union/Policy Covered

RP-Research and Public Service PR