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 high‑performance computing cluster. You will support researchers across computational science, engineering, big data, and AI/ML by ensuring the reliability, performance, and security of the infrastructure.

Key responsibilities

• Provide prompt user support via phone, walk‑in, email, and ticketing system while maintaining high service standards.
• Install, configure, and maintain compute nodes, storage systems, InfiniBand and Ethernet networks, and configuration‑management tools such as Ansible and Puppet.
• Deploy and manage cluster management software, monitoring solutions, and the Slurm workload manager, including QOS policies, accounting, and automation scripts.
• Develop Bash and Python scripts to automate routine administration tasks.
• Manage container environments (Singularity/Apptainer, Docker) for HPC workloads.
• Benchmark CPUs, memory, networking, and storage to optimize performance.
• 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 industry partners to support research projects and drive technology evaluations.
• Create and maintain documentation, SOPs, and training materials.

Required profile

• Strong background in Linux system administration (RHEL, Rocky Linux, or CentOS) for large clusters.
• Experience supporting scientific and AI/ML applications in HPC environments.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot complex hardware and software issues.
• Excellent communication skills for interacting with researchers and vendors.

Required skills

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