Job Description
HPC Systems Architect | Research Infrastructure
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Chicago
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The speed of research depends on the systems behind it.
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We’re working with a research-driven trading firm to hire an HPC Systems Architect who will shape the infrastructure supporting quantitative research and machine learning across its global business.
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This is a hands-on architecture role for someone who has built and operated large-scale compute environments. You’ll make decisions across compute, storage, scheduling and networking, then work with engineering teams to turn those designs into reliable production systems.
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The challenge is to make the whole environment perform: keeping processors fed, moving data efficiently, allocating resources intelligently and finding the bottlenecks that slow researchers down.
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What you’ll own
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- Design and guide the implementation of HPC infrastructure for demanding research and machine learning workloads.
- Evaluate hardware and software across CPU and GPU compute, storage, scheduling and high-speed networking.
- Diagnose performance bottlenecks and improve throughput, utilisation, scalability and reliability.
- Establish architectural standards that support consistent expansion across global environments.
- Work directly with researchers and software engineers to translate workload requirements into practical infrastructure decisions.
- Develop monitoring and analytics that make system performance and capacity constraints visible.
- Shape policies for allocating compute, storage and networking resources.
- Take projects from initial design through delivery, including technical decisions, budgets and timelines.
- Advise senior leadership on technologies that could materially improve research capability.
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What you’ll bring
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You’ve spent around 10+ years building, operating and designing substantial compute environments, with the depth to explain why an architecture works and where it will fail.
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Your experience should cover several of the following:
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- Linux systems engineering and HPC architecture.
- Workload scheduling and orchestration, including Slurm, Kubernetes or comparable platforms.
- High-performance storage, including technologies such as DDN, VAST or Isilon.
- GPU infrastructure and the integration of AI/ML workloads.
- InfiniBand, high-speed Ethernet and network performance.
- Datacentre design, capacity planning and infrastructure expansion.
- Python, Go, C++ or similar languages for automation, tooling and systems development.
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You’ll also need the communication skills to explain technical trade-offs, influence decisions and coordinate delivery across teams. A degree in computer science, electrical engineering or a related discipline is expected.
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Why consider it?
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You’ll have architectural influence across a global HPC environment, direct access to the people using it and responsibility for seeing your decisions through to production.
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We’re particularly interested in systems engineers and HPC engineers who have grown into architecture through building and operating infrastructure.
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Get in touch with a brief overview of the environments you’ve built, the scale involved and the architectural decisions you’ve owned.