What are the responsibilities and job description for the HPC Systems Engineer (Linux / Infrastructure) position at General Atomics?
Job Summary
General Atomics (GA), and its affiliated companies, is one of the world’s leading resources for high-technology systems development ranging from the nuclear fuel cycle to remotely piloted aircraft, airborne sensors, and advanced electric, electronic, wireless and laser technologies.
We are seeking an ambitious Scientific Computing Administrator for the GA Energy Group to support the physicists and researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. General Atomics is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in fusion energy, and this role is critical to supporting the high-performance computing (HPC) workflows, Digital Twin projects, and advanced numerical modeling that make our research possible.
If you are a highly capable Linux Systems Administrator passionate about scientific computing and looking for the opportunity to step up into managing massive parallel storage clusters, this is the place for you. We value work-life balance, sustainable operational paces, and a collaborative, academic-style environment where your work directly supports world-changing energy research.
Duties & Responsibilities
Job Qualifications
Salary range: 116,480 - 208,505
General Atomics (GA), and its affiliated companies, is one of the world’s leading resources for high-technology systems development ranging from the nuclear fuel cycle to remotely piloted aircraft, airborne sensors, and advanced electric, electronic, wireless and laser technologies.
We are seeking an ambitious Scientific Computing Administrator for the GA Energy Group to support the physicists and researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. General Atomics is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in fusion energy, and this role is critical to supporting the high-performance computing (HPC) workflows, Digital Twin projects, and advanced numerical modeling that make our research possible.
If you are a highly capable Linux Systems Administrator passionate about scientific computing and looking for the opportunity to step up into managing massive parallel storage clusters, this is the place for you. We value work-life balance, sustainable operational paces, and a collaborative, academic-style environment where your work directly supports world-changing energy research.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Infrastructure Operations: Maintain the smooth operation of multi-user computer systems, ensuring high availability and data integrity for fusion energy research activities.
- HPC Architecture & Deployment: Collaborate with senior architects to plan, design, and deploy complex parallel file systems (including Lustre, BeeGFS, and WEKA) and scale-out object storage.
- Workflow Optimization: Work directly with science area experts to tune computational workflows, optimize resource scheduling (SLURM), and benchmark complex numerical models to ensure peak I/O performance.
- Automation: Leverage tools like Ansible, Python, and Bash to reduce manual labor, deploy configuration changes, and automate system management.
- User Support: Act as a technical consultant and partner to the research community, translating complex IT security policies and technical limitations into clear, actionable solutions for scientists.
Job Qualifications
- Typically requires a bachelor's degree in information technology or a related discipline and fifteen or more years of progressive professional experience in an information technology department primarily in systems administration. May substitute equivalent working experience in the field in lieu of education.
- Core Systems Experience: Extensive knowledge of the Linux stack, including NFS, ZFS, BTRFS, MDRaid (mdadm), and LVM.
- Scripting & Automation: Demonstrated proficiency in Python, Ansible, and/or Bash scripting for system management.
- Problem Solving: Ability to troubleshoot complex hardware, network, and OS-level issues in a distributed computing environment.
- Experience with, or a strong desire to learn, SLURM workload management and job configuration.
- Exposure to high-performance parallel file systems (Lustre, BeeGFS, WEKA) or large-scale Ceph clusters.
- Experience in a scientific research environment, higher education, or national laboratory.
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Podman, Apptainer) in production settings.
Salary range: 116,480 - 208,505