Research Computing Engineer (AI Infrastructure and HPC)

About the role

The Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State seeks a Research Computing Engineer to support the university’s research mission by designing, operating, automating, and optimizing GPU, AI, and high‑performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. The role works across GPU systems, HPC platforms, storage, networking, automation, and user‑facing research workflows to enable cutting‑edge research in AI, simulation, and computational science.

Work Arrangement

This is a full‑time, on‑site position at University Park reporting to the Research HPC Manager. Remote or hybrid work is not supported.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with teammates, users, and vendor support to diagnose issues and implement solutions across compute, storage, networking, and software environments.
• Monitor, maintain, automate, and improve AI and HPC systems and supporting infrastructure.
• Design, deploy, operate, troubleshoot, and optimize systems using DevOps and infrastructure‑as‑code practices.
• Support GPU‑accelerated computing environments for AI, machine learning, and scientific workloads.
• Partner with researchers and ICDS staff to understand workload requirements and develop engineering solutions for system configuration, performance, and research workflows.
• Support security, logging, documentation, and compliance processes for systems, including those subject to federal research security.
• Contribute to planning, requirements gathering, process improvement, and operational readiness for new services and infrastructure.
• Provide timely updates to system documentation and respond to user questions with clear, actionable guidance.
• Evaluate and improve tools, platforms, and workflows that support AI model development, training, inference, and data movement at scale.

Required qualifications and skills

• Proficiency in a Linux environment (command‑line tools, file editing, POSIX permissions, system configuration).
• Strong scripting ability in Bash and Python.
• Strong problem‑solving skills and ability to debug complex systems.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a technical team.
• Experience using AI tools or AI agents to improve programming, debugging, development, or prototyping workflows.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with AI and HPC workloads, including multi‑GPU node administration, driver/firmware lifecycle management, NVLink/NVSwitch validation, and GPU health monitoring.
• Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure for model training, inference, experiment workflows, and large‑scale data processing.
• Familiarity with job schedulers such as Slurm, PBS, HTCondor, or LSF.
• Software development experience in HPC programming environments (C/C++, Fortran, CUDA, MPI, OpenMP).
• DevOps experience with Git‑based workflows, CI/CD, automation, and collaborative development practices.
• Experience with system deployment tools (e.g., xCAT, Warewulf, OpenCHAMI, OpenStack/Bifrost, MAAS).
• Experience administering or supporting Kubernetes.
• Experience with virtualization and containerization technologies (VMware, Docker, Apptainer, Podman).
• Networking experience, including EVPN, BGP, IPv6, and high‑speed interconnects (InfiniBand, HPE Slingshot, etc.).
• Experience with HPC or distributed storage systems (GPFS, Lustre, Ceph, VAST).
• Observability and monitoring experience with tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, or InfluxDB.
• Database experience (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL).
• Security experience including identity and access management, single sign‑on, LDAP/Active Directory.
• Familiarity with Agile project development.
• Prior experience in academic research computing, research data infrastructure, or large‑scale shared computing environments.

Education, Experience, and Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree.
• 1+ years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• No required certifications.

Salary & Benefits

The salary range for this position is $81,312.00 – $122,016.00.

• Competitive benefits package including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Robust retirement plans.
• Substantial paid time off (holidays, vacation, sick leave).
• Generous tuition discount (75%) for employees and eligible spouses/children.

Why ICDS

At ICDS you’ll build and support infrastructure that enables advanced research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, simulation, data science, and computationally intensive discovery. You’ll work on the clusters, storage, and GPU systems Penn State researchers rely on, spanning provisioning, scheduling, networking, and user‑facing tooling. The role offers exposure to the full stack—from user job submissions down to drivers and firmware—while staying close to the science by collaborating directly with researchers to meet real research needs.