About UMass Amherst
The flagship of the Commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity, and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship, and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued—and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges, and 100 undergraduate majors. We believe every member of our university community can contribute to our ongoing success by striving for the highest level of excellence as we seek breakthrough solutions to mounting environmental, social, economic, and technological challenges in our world.
Job Summary
The High Performance Computing (HPC) Software Engineer will support UMass Amherst’s research, teaching, and learning missions by assisting with the operation and improvement of the university’s HPC resources. This role involves supporting and maintaining HPC environments in Amherst, MA, and at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke, MA. The engineer provides technical support to users at all skill levels, offering individualized support for populations ranging from new adopters to seasoned experts. The position requires advanced technical expertise, continuous learning, teamwork, independent problem-solving, and strong communication skills.
Essential Functions
- Develop, document, and automate processes to improve system management and installation, as well as user workflows. This includes developing and maintaining the scripts and processes for installing the cluster from scratch using ansible or similar automation platform.
- Design, develop, and program the user interface to the research-centric HPC environment, often independently, but also in coordination with others. This includes the GUI frontend and portal as well as user-facing and system-level utility scripts.
- Analyze, evaluate, and install new software for incorporation into the HPC environment. This includes being the primary maintainer of the user-facing module stack, which is the software that users run on the cluster to do their research.
- Recommend changes and enhancements to improve user experiences and technological performance in the research-centric HPC and high-speed networking environment; Coordinate and execute said changes.
- Provide technical expertise and support for the Linux-based research HPC environment consisting of hundreds of physical servers, thousands of cores, and flash/disk storage interconnected by high-speed networking, while ensuring security compliance and best practices.
- Monitor systems performance, diagnose technical issues and implement resolutions to optimize HPC functionality.
- Support and mentor students and junior staff in HPC installation, maintenance, and troubleshooting; provide escalation support for complex software issues.
- Contribute to the development of open-source tools used in the Research Computing environment and collaborate with the broader research community.
Other Functions
- Provide consulting to IT and other departments on research-centric HPC matters.
- Perform other related duties as needed to meet university objectives.
Minimum Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Education, Experience, Certifications, Licensure)
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related field with at least one (1) year of HPC cluster management experience.
- Proficiency in Linux-based HPC system software, cluster management, monitoring, reporting, and job queueing tools.
- Strong Linux administration and scripting skills (e.g., Python, shell scripting).
- Experience with HPC-connected storage.
- Proven ability to successfully deliver, improve, and troubleshoot services in multi-vendor environment.
- Strong communication, customer service, problem-solving, and organizational skills.
- Ability to successfully complete complex, large-scale computing system projects.
- Willingness and ability to learn technologies and required domain knowledge at a rapid pace.
- Experience providing support to academic researchers (faculty, staff, students).
- Ability to work effectively in a dynamic, collaborative environment with colleagues across job functions and departments.
Preferred Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Education, Experience, Certifications, Licensure)
- Experience with Slurm scheduler using multiple partitioned resources and federated authentication.
- Familiarity with integrating and supporting containerization in an HPC environment.
- Familiarity with spack, lmod, or other HPC module systems.
Physical Demands/Working Conditions
Typical office environment activity.
Work Schedule
- Monday – Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm, 37.5 hours a week.
- Some nights and weekends work required.
- This position has the opportunity for a hybrid work schedule, which is defined by the University as an arrangement where an employee’s work is regularly performed at a location other than the campus workspace for a portion of the week. As this position falls within the Professional Staff Union, it is subject to the terms and conditions of the Professional Staff Union collective bargaining agreement.
Salary Information
Level 27
PSU Hiring Ranges
Special Instructions to Applicants
Along with the application, please submit a resume, and cover letter. References will be checked at the finalist stage. Please be prepared to provide contact information for three (3) professional references.
UMass Amherst is committed to a policy of equal opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, caste, creed, sex, age, marital status, national origin, disability, political belief or affiliation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related condition(s), veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, genetic information, natural and protective hairstyle and any other class of individuals protected from discrimination in employment, admission to and participation in academic programs, activities, and services, and the selection of vendors who provide services or products to the University. To fulfill that policy, UMass Amherst is further committed to a program of affirmative action to eliminate or mitigate artificial barriers and to increase opportunities for the recruitment and advancement of qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans. It is the policy of UMass Amherst to comply with the applicable federal and state statutes, rules, and regulations concerning equal opportunity and affirmative action.