Staff HPC Engineer

The HPC Engineering team is part of the AI Compute Platform organization at Biohub, a non-profit research lab committed to open science and open-source AI. We own the design, operation, and reliability of hybrid GPU AI clusters that power frontier AI biology research: protein language models, genomic foundation models, and scientific reasoning systems built to be shared. Our  infrastructure  supports day-to-day AI researcher workflows. The team works at the intersection of AI tooling, distributed systems, HPC, and frontier AI, debugging deep AI infrastructure problems and building AI systems critical to the entire AI organization.

We seek a Staff HPC Engineer to help lead the evolution of our advanced computing infrastructure into a next-generation hybrid HPC and AI platform. This role will help shape strategy, architecture, and operations for high-performance computing resources — including cutting-edge GPUs, large-scale storage, and high-speed networks — while enabling transformative science through AI and machine learning at scale.

You will design, implement, and optimize a unified HPC-AI ecosystem blending on-prem Slurm-managed clusters, cloud GPU resources, and containerized environments. This hybrid environment will power everything from traditional HPC workloads to large AI training jobs, generative model development, real-time inference, and data-intensive pipelines.

The successful candidate will be a thought leader in HPC infrastructure , capable of partnering with scientists, computational biologists, and software engineers to translate complex research needs into high-impact computing solutions. You will also foster adoption of emerging AI tools, and ensure our systems can scale to meet the demands of next-generation biomedical research.

HPC  Engineering

• Build and support a hybrid HPC-AI environment with large-scale on-prem compute/storage and elastic cloud GPU clusters (Coreweave, AWS, GCP).
• Architect and optimize environments for large-scale AI training and tuning, and low-latency scientific workloads.
• Integrate MLOps and model deployment pipelines into HPC infrastructure, ensuring reproducibility and efficiency.
• Implement advanced resource scheduling and orchestration (Slurm, Kubernetes, SUNK) optimized for mixed HPC and AI workflows.

Operational Excellence

• Support researchers with job optimization, GPU utilization best practices, and performance tuning for AI and HPC applications.
• Evaluate, deploy, and maintain AI/ML software stacks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, RAPIDS) and HPC toolchains.
• Ensure robust data ingest, analysis, and management capabilities for AI and HPC workloads, including integration with parallel file systems and object storage.

Collaboration & Enablement

• Work with diverse science teams to translate research requirements into hardware/software solutions, from experimental design through publication.
• Promote best practices for AI model training, validation, and deployment in shared computing environments.
• Foster a culture of shared learning by running internal workshops on HPC-AI tooling (e.g., VS Code remote dev, containerization, MLOps workflows).

Essential

• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, AI/ML, Data Science, Systems Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years building and managing HPC infrastructure, with significant experience integrating AI/ML workloads.
• Proven track record architecting environments for large-scale GPU AI training and inference in hybrid on-prem/cloud environments.
• Deep expertise with HPC scheduling (Slurm), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and cloud GPU services.
• Strong hands-on experience with AI frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) and distributed training strategies (Horovod, DeepSpeed, Ray).
• Knowledge of MLOps best practices, including CI/CD for ML, model registry, experiment tracking, and performance monitoring.
• Exceptional ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams and communicate complex technical concepts clearly.
• Demonstrated leadership in guiding infrastructure teams, influencing organizational strategy, and fostering adoption of new technologies.

Technical

• Advanced Linux systems administration, HPC networking (Infiniband, Ethernet), and storage systems administration (VAST Lustre, Weka and ZFS)
• Cloud platform expertise (Coreweave, AWS, GCP) including GPU provisioning, storage, and networking for AI workloads.
• Proficiency in automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, Puppet), containerization (Docker, Singularity), and orchestration frameworks.
• Strong experience debugging and troubleshooting hardware across the stack (network, GPU, compute and storage systems).
• Strong scripting/programming skills (Python, Bash) and familiarity with version control (Git).
• Experience integrating AI LLMs, AI coding assistants, and custom model development into HPC workflows.

The San Francisco, CA base pay range for a new hire in this role is for a Staff HPC Engineer 214,000–$268,000 and for a Senior Staff HPC Engineer $241,000–$300,000. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. 

This position may be eligible to participate in our discretionary annual performance bonus program. Bonus eligibility and targets are determined in accordance with our total rewards philosophy and may vary by role.

As we grow, we’re excited to strengthen in-person connections and cultivate a collaborative, team-oriented environment. This role is a hybrid position requiring you to be onsite for at least 60% of the working month, approximately 3 days a week, with specific in-office days determined by the team’s manager. The exact schedule will be at the hiring manager's discretion and communicated during the interview process.

We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible. 

• Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. 
• Funding for select family-forming benefits. 
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving

If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

#LI-Hybrid