Senior Architect - Secure Research Infrastructure, Technology Solutions
About the role
The Senior Architect for Secure Research Infrastructure is a critical position at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), serving as a bridge between raw computational power and data governance. This role involves designing, building, and managing the next generation of computing environments tailored for AI/ML workloads.
Responsibilities
Architect AI/HPC Infrastructure: Design and scale GPU clusters and high-speed interconnects to support large-scale model training and inference.
Engineered Secure Enclaves: Build isolated walled-garden environments using hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments or micro-segmentation to process sensitive datasets.
Compliance Engineering: Translate requirements from compliance standards such as NIST, SPRS, HIPAA, and CMMC into technical controls. Build the technical infrastructure that serves as the source of truth for audits.
DevSecOps & Automation: Lead the Infrastructure as Code strategy using such as Terraform or Ansible to ensure that security patches and configuration changes are audited, versioned, and immutable.
High-Performance Storage: Manage petabyte-scale, parallel file systems (e.g., Lustre, VAST, GPFS) with integrated encryption-at-rest and strict POSIX/ACL access controls.
Perform other related duties and participate in special projects as assigned.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor Degree within Computer Science or closely related field of study. Minimum of 10 years of professional level IT experience within Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Research Computing including the design and implementation of advanced high performance computing systems; data (acquisition, storage, management and reporting); and networks in support of research initiatives.
Demonstrated Qualifications: Demonstrated record of building systems with System Security Plans that successfully passed audits for compliance standards such as HIPAA, NIST 800-53/171, or CMMC level 2. Demonstrated knowledge of Slurm/Kubernetes orchestration and InfiniBand/NVLink/RoCE network topology.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience: Experience working with security, scanning, and auditing platforms such as Splunk. Experience with encrypting data at rest and in motion at hybrid and federated systems. 7+ years in Systems Engineering, with 3+ years specifically in designing secure enclaves and HPC or AI infrastructure.
Education: Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Experience with Secure Enclaves, identity management (Entra/AD), and Zero Trust Architecture. Proficiency in Python, bash, CI/CD pipelines (GitLab/GitHub Actions), and Linux kernel hardening.