Senior Research HPC Engineer

Senior Research HPC Engineer (LMS 2914)
Salary £57, 623 - £61,622 plus London Allowance £5,560 per annum
Higher salary of £61,622 - £67,693 plus London Allowance of £5,560 per annum will be available for candidates with significant relevant experience
Permanent | Full Time | Location: Hammersmith London 

Main Duties & Approach

• Meet regularly with Heads of IT and Bioinformatics, and other parties to develop and deliver Scientific Computing infrastructure, software provisions, and resilient services in line with strategic and scientific goals

• Work closely with researchers to develop reusable tools and to translate experimental and analytical requirements into scalable computational solutions that accelerate scientific discovery and improve research productivity

• Support researchers in utilising HPC, including triaging user issues and translating common pain points into platform improvements

• Help build and maintain reproducible runtime environments, container images, and workflow-supporting services for scientific computing workloads, including bioinformatics, AI/ML, data processing, and simulation workflows

• Assume responsibility for coordination and provision of HPC user training and onboarding

• Ensure best practices in project management are maintained to ensure work is aligned with defined goals and that HPC projects are managed within agreed benefit, timescale, cost, quality, and risk limits

• Monitor, report on, and promote the Institute’s Scientific Computing provisions

• Design and manage varied communication strategies for effective and timely stakeholder engagement, including user-group meetings to ensure full visibility of their ongoing and future requirements

• Develop and deliver training, documentation (e.g., runbooks, SOPs), and onboarding materials to empower researchers to effectively use computational tools

• Maximise opportunities to network with similar organisations to benchmark services and activities Research developing trends to ensure future provision and cost-effective delivery of the Institute’s scientific goals

Technical Activities

• Assist with the scoping, provisioning, configuration, scaling, and validation of compute, storage, networking, and platform services within a high-performance computing infrastructure

• Support and implement the packaging, versioning, and validation of scientific software to ensure reproducibility and portability across research projects

• Establish policies and systems to ensure that workloads placed on the HPC systems are managed, prioritised, and run to achieve optimal service levels and uptime

• Install, configure, and manage Linux applications manually and using deployment software

• Resolve workflow performance issues on the cluster, and help to design HPC jobs

• Implement and maintain management and monitoring tools, report usage levels and service level data

• Streamline and automate maintenance, deployment, and configuration tasks

• Alongside the Head of IT, assume responsibility for documenting and implementing relevant disaster recovery processes

• Ensure awareness via user feedback and monitoring of likely points of failure, proactive maintenance in mitigation, and repair of HPC resources by diagnosing, anticipating, and troubleshooting arising problems

• Maintain awareness of emerging HPC software security vulnerabilities and apply relevant security patches

• Support the Head of IT in implementing and maintaining HPC related usage policies 

• Support LMS IT staff as requested for issues and queries relating to standalone Linux/Unix systems

• Other duties commensurate with the grade of the post as directed by the supervisor

Person Requirements

Education / Qualifications / Training required (will be assessed from the application form): 

Essential

• A degree in a computing/scientific research/engineering subject with a significant computational component, or equivalent skills and experience. Significant experience of working at a high-level within a relevant area

Desirable

• Industry-standard Linux certifications (e.g. RHCA, RHCSA)

• Current qualifications in project management (e.g. PRINCE2)

• Knowledge, experience, or qualification in cloud computing

• Knowledge or education to a higher level within a scientific field

Knowledge and experience required (will be assessed from the application form and at the interview): 

Specific Role Competencies

Essential

• Hands-on experience supporting and administering Linux-based systems in an HPC, research, academic, or production environment

• Experience in configuration and maintenance of multi-queue job scheduling systems (e.g. SLURM)

• Experience in the use of scientific software compilation and deployment systems (e.g. Spack, EasyBuild, Lmod, conda)

• Virtualisation and containerisation deployment and management (e.g. Docker, Singularity)

• Ability to work closely with multidisciplinary research teams, understand scientific computing needs, and deliver practical services that advance scientific goals

• Knowledge of scripting (e.g., Bash) and version control systems (e.g., Git/GitHub) to support reproducible and collaborative research

• Integration of heterogeneous Linux/Windows/Mac environments (e.g. Active Directory)

• Ability to troubleshoot issues across systems, networking, storage, identity, containers, schedulers, and user workloads, and to follow problems through to a reliable operational fix

• Experience with automation tooling (e.g. Salt, xCAT)

• Maintain awareness of HPC cyber security principles, best practices, and emerging threats

• High attention to detail and accuracy to effectively analyse and interpret complex data and use it solve to complex technical problems quickly and effectively though leadership, delegation and the ability to deep-dive when necessary

Desirable

• Exposure to computational research involving GPU, including AI/ML methods applied to biomedical problems

• Experience supporting GPU-accelerated workloads, NVIDIA tooling, CUDA-aware environments, and/or AI/ML and bioinformatics workloads on shared compute platforms.

• Familiarity with bioinformatics or scientific workflow frameworks (e.g., Nextflow, Snakemake, WDL/Cromwell), and an understanding of reproducible pipeline design

• Experience working in a scientific, academic, life-science, or research computing environment where requirements evolve through close collaboration with researchers

• Knowledge of tools that support reproducible research and automation (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, workflow testing, IaC tools like Ansible and Terraform)

• Familiarity with large-scale biological data types (e.g., from genomics, EM or confocal microscopy, medical imaging, phenomics) and associated storage/access challenges

• Familiarity with identity, access, and security controls in Linux or research environments, least-privilege access, and security patching.

• Experience of C, R, or Python programming

• Experience with GPU-focused hardware and software

• Experience monitoring and optimising research workloads and system performance, using tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, Arbiter2

   

People Leadership

Desirable

• Motivating and developing staff to utilise HPC effectively through HPC onboarding and training 

• Project managing work packages within and between groups

• Resolving complaints and in conflict resolution

Personal Skills / Behaviours / Qualities (will be assessed at the interview):

Essential

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Able to self‑motivate when working independently, on projects, and collaboratively within a team 

• Effectively plans, multitask, and prioritises workload to achieve results, adapting quickly while maintaining control in challenging situations

• Ensures appropriate engagement of colleagues with relevant stakeholders and issues

• Ability to develop and encourage cross-boundary working relationships and to work collaboratively         

• Contribute positively to IT and cross-functional teams and shares knowledge and skills

Additional information: 

Please upload your CV, the names and contacts of two references, along with a cover letter stating why you are applying for this post (showing evidence against the requirements as per the Job Description and Person Specification). Please quote reference number LMS 2914

Please note that final appointment will be subject to pre-employment screening.

Please note that applications may be reviewed by both LMS and Imperial staff

Closing date: 18 October 2026

UKRI is an organisation that brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Together, we build an independent organisation with a strong voice and vision ensuring the UK maintains its world-leading position in research and innovation.

Supporting some of the world’s most exciting and challenging research projects, we develop and operate some of the most remarkable scientific facilities in the world. We are pushing the frontiers of human knowledge through fundamental research and delivering benefits for UK society and the economy through world-class research, skills and business-led innovation.

More information can be found at www.ukri.org.

Choosing to come to work at UKRI means that you will have access to a whole host of benefits from a defined benefit pension scheme, excellent holiday entitlement, access to employee shopping/travel discounts and salary sacrifice cycle to work scheme.  For more details, visit benefits of working for UKRI.

How we support EDI in the workforce

At UKRI, we believe that everyone has a right to be treated with dignity and respect, and to be provided with equal opportunities to thrive and succeed in an environment that enables them to do so. We also value diversity of thought and experience within inclusive groups, organisations and the wider community. For further information, please visit ‘How we support EDI in the workforce’.

Disability Confident Employer

As users of the disability confident scheme, any candidate who opts into the scheme and best meets the essential criteria, will be shortlisted for interview. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

How to apply

Online applications only preferred for this role. Please submit a CV and covering letter which clearly outlines how you fulfil the criteria specified along with your motivation for UKRI and the role. Ensure that the job reference number is included in the filename description of each document uploaded. Note that failure to address the above criteria or submit an application without a covering letter may result in the application not being considered.

UKRI seeks to ensure it creates and maintains a system of openness, fairness and inclusion – a collaborative, trusted environment, which is attractive to and accessible to everyone who is interested in developing their career with us.

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be rejected and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action.

As part of the pre-employment checks there is a requirement to undergo Baseline Personnel Security Screening. BPSS is a pre-condition of employment and failure to achieve it may mean that the employment offer is rescinded. UKRI reserves the right to run, or re-run, security clearance as required during the course of employment.