Senior HPC Systems Administrator

About the role

The KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory is looking for a highly motivated Senior HPC Systems Administrator to manage a large-scale HPC cluster of roughly 600 CPU and GPU nodes, storage systems, and high‑speed networks. You will provide day‑to‑day operational support to researchers working on computational science, engineering, big data, and AI/ML workloads.

Key responsibilities

• Deliver timely user support via phone, walk‑in, email, and ticketing system while maintaining high service standards.
• Install, configure, and manage compute nodes, storage, InfiniBand, Ethernet, and configuration‑management tools such as Ansible and Puppet.
• Deploy and maintain cluster management, monitoring tools, and the Slurm workload manager, including QoS policies, accounting, and automation scripts.
• Develop Bash and Python automation scripts to streamline administration tasks.
• Manage container environments (Singularity/Apptainer, Docker) for HPC workloads.
• Benchmark system components and enforce security best practices, including node hardening and kernel patching.
• Administer parallel file systems (Lustre, GPFS, Weka, Vast) with performance tuning and capacity planning.
• Collaborate with faculty, researchers, and industrial partners to support computational projects and drive proof‑of‑concept evaluations.
• Coordinate with vendors to resolve hardware and software issues promptly.
• Create and maintain user documentation, SOPs, and training materials.

Required profile

• Strong background in Linux system administration (RHEL, Rocky Linux, or CentOS) for large HPC environments.
• Proven experience supporting computational science, engineering, data analysis, and AI/ML applications.
• Ability to work independently, troubleshoot complex issues, and communicate effectively with diverse research teams.

Required skills

• Linux (RHEL, Rocky Linux, CentOS)
• Ansible, Puppet
• Slurm workload manager
• Python, C++, Bash scripting
• Singularity/Apptainer, Docker
• InfiniBand and Ethernet networking
• HPC storage systems and parallel file systems (Lustre, GPFS, Weka, Vast)
• Monitoring and benchmarking tools
• Security hardening and compliance practices