Research Computing Infrastructure Engineer

About the Frederick National Laboratory

The Frederick National Laboratory is operated by Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. The lab addresses some of the most urgent and intractable problems in the biomedical sciences in cancer and AIDS, drug development and first-in-human clinical trials, applications of nanotechnology in medicine, and rapid response to emerging threats of infectious diseases. Accountability, Compassion, Collaboration, Dedication, Integrity and Versatility; it's the FNL way.

Program Description

The mission of Enterprise Information Technology (EIT) is to develop an enterprise-level, consolidated information technology infrastructure that provides exceptional IT capabilities to the Frederick National Labs for Cancer Research (NCI-Frederick/FNLCR) in support of basic, translational, and clinical cancer and AIDS research. The IT Operations Group (ITOG) is a part of Enterprise Information Technology (EIT) within Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. ITOG is responsible for computational servers, storage servers, virtual machine infrastructure, and the FNLCR network. ITOG focuses on implementing enterprise IT best practices in the areas of computational services, storage, backup, and archiving; batch and application support; server consolidation and virtualization; network infrastructure; unification of voice, teleconferencing, and video communication technologies; and improved infrastructure for collocation of dedicated servers.

Key Roles/Responsibilities

The Research Computing Infrastructure Engineer provides technical leadership for the design, standards, and implementation of the SOM virtualization and container platform and its supporting infrastructure. This role evaluates and implements high-impact solutions involving current platform technologies, weighing long-term service delivery, cost, and operational practicality, and serves as a technical mentor across the team. The position supports research computing programs and operations within a federal compliance boundary.

• Design, deploy, and operate the SOM virtualization and container platform as secure, compliant infrastructure within a federal boundary.
• Operate the virtualization substrate: cluster lifecycle, node management, upgrades, and the underlying storage and networking.
• Manage downstream Kubernetes cluster provisioning, RBAC, and multi-tenant access for research groups.
• Own storage integration across the platform (software-defined storage plus POSIX and object storage such as VAST) for VM and container workloads.
• Build and maintain the security and compliance posture of the platform: SSP development, ATO support, continuous monitoring, and remediation under NIST 800-53/FISMA.
• Automate provisioning, configuration, and scaling through infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD practices (Ansible, Terraform, Packer, GitHub Actions, or equivalent).
• Partner with embedded bioinformatics staff who own user-facing VM provisioning, container workflows, and job templates, providing the platform and guardrails they build on.

Basic Qualifications

To be considered for this position, you must minimally meet the knowledge, skills, and abilities listed below:

• Possession of Bachelor's degree from an accredited college/university according to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) or four (4) years relevant experience in lieu of degree. Foreign degrees must be evaluated for U.S. equivalency.
• In addition to the education requirement, a minimum of eight (8) years of related experience.
• Strong Linux systems engineering and administration.
• Hands-on experience operating a virtualization platform in production (KVM/libvirt, VMware/vSphere, OpenStack, Harvester, or equivalent), including host lifecycle, live migration, and storage backends.
• Hands-on scripting/programming proficiency (Python, Bash, or Go) for automation and operations.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation tooling (Ansible, Terraform, Packer, or equivalent).
• Hands-on experience standing up and maintaining Kubernetes clusters, including upgrades, RBAC, networking, and storage.
• Experience working within a federal security and compliance framework: SSP, ATO, continuous monitoring, or NIST 800-53/FISMA controls.
• Comfortable with small-team environments and taking end-to-end ownership of compute infrastructure.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

Candidates with these desired skills will be given preferential consideration:

• Direct experience with Harvester and/or Rancher in production, or demonstrated ability to rapidly own a new HCI/Kubernetes platform.
• Experience with KubeVirt or other VM-on-Kubernetes patterns.
• Experience with Longhorn or comparable software-defined storage.
• Understanding of storage integration with high-performance clusters (POSIX + object storage, VAST or similar).
• Familiarity with cloud GPU environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and hybrid workflows.
• Familiarity with HPC scheduling (Slurm, batch workloads) and with container workflow/pipeline tooling (Argo, Kubeflow, Ray, Prefect, Airflow), understood as the embedded team's lane rather than this role's core.
• Good communication and documentation skills, the ability to make complex infrastructure understandable to researchers and other engineers.

Expected Competencies

• Operational command of Kubernetes and at least one virtualization platform, with the ability to own a virtualization stack end to end.
• Deep Linux systems administration, performance tuning, and automation, with sound security judgment inside a federal compliance boundary.

Pay

Employment benefits include competitive compensation, Health and Wellness programs, Income Protection, Paid Leave and Retirement. The posted pay range for this job is 123,800.00 - 207,125.00 USD. The posted pay range is a general guideline and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include, but are not limited to, responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as internal equity, and alignment with market data. The salary range posted is a full-time equivalent salary and will vary depending on scheduled hours for part time positions.