Research Computing Facilitator

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Company Overview:

Santa Clara University is a prestigious academic institution dedicated to advancing research, innovation, and education. As such, we are expanding our high-performance computing environment as part of a major donor-funded investment in GPU and AI research. We are seeking a Research Computing Facilitator to join our dynamic team and be the bridge between the HPC infrastructure and the faculty, researchers, and students who use it.

Job Description:

As the strategic anchor for the SCU High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment, the Research Computing Facilitator serves as the primary technical partner between Santa Clara University’s research community and its computational infrastructure.

This role focuses on the "outer relationship" by understanding what faculty, researchers, and students are trying to accomplish, translating that into requests that the technical infrastructure team can act on and building the training, documentation, and support that help researchers become self-sufficient on the cluster.The Research Computing Facilitator provides leadership, engineers robust processes, and supports long-term planning to ensure the HPC ecosystem evolves alongside the university's research mission.

The ideal candidate is highly curious, creative, tenacious, and works with minimal supervision. This is a strong fit for someone who enjoys working directly with researchers, has an advanced technical toolkit, and wants to grow in research computing. A research background (e.g., graduate study, lab work) is valuable along with the ability to work collaboratively in a higher education environment.

Work Schedule: This position requires on-site support on a regular basis. On-campus vs. remote schedules will operate on a hybrid model based on strategic and operational tasks.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Research Consultation and Support

• Serve as the primary point of contact for faculty, researchers, and students seeking to use HPC and research computing resources.
• Own the full-cycle consultation process with researchers and faculty, translating cutting-edge academic requirements into scalable, robust technical solutions.
• Evaluate, recommend, and drive the adoption of emerging technologies and external integrations with national academic computing resources to expand institutional research capabilities.
• Provide high-level technical leadership and programming support to resolve complex, multi-disciplinary computational challenges across university departments.

2. Process Innovation, Governance, and Training

• Design and deliver standard operating procedures (SOPs) and automated workflows for user onboarding, resource allocation, and system governance.
• Collaborate with the technical infrastructure team to establish system performance metrics and reporting frameworks to showcase HPC utilization and research impacts to executive leadership.
• Design and spearhead comprehensive training programs, advanced workshops, and modern digital documentation to cultivate a self-sustaining research culture.
• Lead training on modern research computing practices, including code management, AI-assisted coding, CI/CD, and version control (e.g., Git/GitHub).

3. Community and Program Building

• Gather researcher feedback and usage patterns and share them with the technical infrastructure team to inform capacity planning and tooling decisions.
• Track engagement and training metrics and report on research computing adoption and impact to leadership.
• Inform the deployment lifecycle, configuration, and optimization of specialized scientific software, compilers, containerized environments, and shared libraries.
• Support the architecture, fine-tuning, and policy creation for workload managers and cluster schedulers (e.g., Slurm) to ensure optimal, equitable resource distribution.
• Provide thought partnership to the scaling and operational strategy for parallel storage and distributed file systems (e.g., BeeGFS, Lustre).

4. Security Frameworks and Systems Stewardship

• Support and enforce comprehensive security frameworks, including server hardening, access controls, and vulnerability mitigation protocols to safeguard sensitive research data.
• Participate in planning conversations for new hardware, software, and services, bringing the researcher's perspective
• Stay current with emerging trends in HPC, AI, and cloud technologies to inform long-term infrastructure planning.

C. QUALIFICATIONS

1. Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Technical Competency: Working familiarity with Linux command-line environments and common high performance and research computing tools (e.g., job schedulers, containers, version control)..
• Scripting and Automation: Intermediate experience writing and debugging scripts (e.g., Bash, Python, or similar).
• Cybersecurity Exposure: Understanding of cybersecurity principles, encryption standards, and risk-mitigation strategies unique to open research cluster environments.
• Communication: Exceptional interpersonal and verbal communication skills; comfortable explaining technical concepts to non-technical users.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical skills with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving technical and human issues.

2. Experience and Education

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a highly quantitative field required. Advanced degree (MS or PhD) a plus..
• Experience: 5+ years of progressively responsible experience in Information Technology operations and high performance computing system design, ideally within an academic, government lab, or corporate R&D research setting.
• Preferred Experience: 3+ years of experience explicitly leading, architecting, and supporting multi-node HPC cluster environments.

D. PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• Routinely perform server installation, troubleshooting, and repairs at the data center, including lifting or moving objects up to 50 pounds.
• Considerable time spent at a desk using a computer terminal.
• Ability to meet in-person with researchers and colleagues on the Santa Clara University campus.

E. WORK ENVIRONMENT

• Hybrid Eligible: Regular on-site presence required, typically at least 3–4 days a week, depending on task requirements.
• Occasional exposure to data center conditions, including equipment noise (>80dB), high voltage electricity, and varying temperatures.
• Standard work hours are 9 am – 5 pm Pacific, with occasional evening or weekend work required for system maintenance or outage mitigation.

Telecommute

Santa Clara University is registered to do business in the following states: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Illinois. Employees approved to telecommute are required to perform their work within one of these states.

Telecommute

Santa Clara University is registered to do business in the following states: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Illinois. Employees approved to telecommute are required to perform their work within one of these states.

EEO Statement

Equal Opportunity/Notice of Nondiscrimination

Santa Clara University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, marital status, parental status, veteran or military status, physical or mental disability, medical conditions, pregnancy or related conditions, reproductive health decision making, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. For a complete copy of Santa Clara University’s equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies, please visit the Office of Equal Opportunity and Title IX website at https://www.scu.edu/title-ix/.

Clery Notice of Availability

Santa Clara University annually collects information about campus crimes and other reportable incidents in accordance with the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. To view the Santa Clara University report, please visit the Campus Safety Services website. To request a paper copy please call Campus Safety at (408) 554-4441. The report includes the type of crime, venue, and number of occurrences.

Americans with Disabilities Act

Consistent with its obligations under the law, Santa Clara University will provide reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities. Applicants who wish to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should contact the Department of Human Resources ADA Team at hraccommodations@scu.edu or by phone at (408)554-4392. Please note: This contact information is intended for accommodation requests only. Resumes or inquiries about application status sent to this inbox will not be reviewed or forwarded. For resumes or questions regarding application status, please contact hrservicedesk@scu.edu.

About Us

Santa Clara University is a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located in California’s Silicon Valley, offering its 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, plus master’s, Ph.D., and law degrees.

Santa Clara University does not sponsor work visas for staff positions. If hired, as a condition of employment with the University, individuals must provide verification of their identity and eligibility to work in the United States.

Santa Clara University offers a comprehensive benefits package for benefit eligible employees with programs and resources designed to promote and sustain personal health care, well-being, and the financial objectives of our employees and families. Visit our benefits page for more information.