Research User Computing Lead

About the role

The Research User Computing Lead provides hands‑on technical leadership for KAUST’s Linux scientific workstation platform. The role is responsible for the architecture, provisioning, configuration, automation, security, and lifecycle management of high‑performance workstations that support faculty, researchers, and students in their research and teaching activities.

Key responsibilities

• Define and drive the architecture and technical direction for the Linux scientific workstation fleet, covering configuration management, provisioning, inventory, patching, access control, security, and lifecycle management.
• Establish infrastructure‑as‑code, GitOps, and automation standards for the Linux platform team and guide Windows and macOS endpoint platforms.
• Document build‑vs‑buy and tooling decisions for provisioning, configuration, secrets management, observability, and fleet operations, including rationale, risks, and trade‑offs.
• Design and continuously improve physical and remote scientific workstation platforms to ensure secure, high‑performance access for all users.
• Oversee platform operations such as bare‑metal and virtual provisioning, patch orchestration, inventory, drift detection, observability, reliability, and service continuity.
• Maintain the security and compliance posture of the fleet, implementing host hardening, secrets management, audit logging, and alignment with frameworks like NIST 800‑171 and CIS Benchmarks.

Required profile

• Minimum five years (60 months) of experience in platform engineering, Linux systems infrastructure, or related fields.
• Proven ability to lead technical teams and define architectural standards across multiple operating systems.
• Experience with security compliance, hardening, and audit processes in a research or academic environment.

Required skills

• GitOps, Git workflows
• Network access control, RADIUS, 802.1X
• Security compliance baselines, NIST 800‑171, CIS Benchmarks
• Platform engineering, infrastructure‑as‑code, declarative configuration management
• Linux systems infrastructure, hardware lifecycle management
• Windows and macOS endpoint engineering (supervisory)
• NVIDIA CUDA, BIOS automation
• Observability, endpoint security, patch management
• Ansible, Puppet