Senior Research Infrastructure Engineer
Job summary
Imperial College London is a world leading, top ten university and is home to the greatest concentration of high-impact research of any UK university. The Research Computing Service (RCS) provides support for High-Performance Computing, a team of Research Software Engineers, and support for a growing number of research applications that support the research data lifecycle. Here is an opportunity for a technically skilled professional to...
Job listing information
- Reference FOG00775
- Date posted 14 April 2023
- Closing date 30 April 2023
Job description
Job summary
Imperial College London is a world leading, top ten university and is home to the greatest concentration of high-impact research of any UK university. The Research Computing Service (RCS) provides support for High-Performance Computing, a team of Research Software Engineers, and support for a growing number of research applications that support the research data lifecycle.
Here is an opportunity for a technically skilled professional to support world leading research. As a Research Infrastructure Engineer your role will be key to developing and supporting high-performance computing and associated research data platforms at Imperial both on-premise and in the cloud. You will ensure researchers, whatever their field, have access to the most appropriate equipment and technology for their work.
The role provides opportunities to learn and develop new skills, working as part of a team of research computing specialists, and as part of the broader RCS and Imperial College ICT team.
Research Computing Services HPC estate is a large, heterogeneous system with both proprietary and commodity clusters. It includes high-throughput capacity, high-end capability, GPU compute and large-memory services and is tailored to support the diverse computing needs of the research community.
The evaluation and integration of new technology plays a major part in provisioning research computing systems. This role provides the opportunity to develop on-premise HPC and evaluate and implement new cloud-based technologies. Together with our team of analysts, you will provide advice to researchers.
Duties and responsibilities
- Be responsible for the installation, configuration, and support of services as required within the central Research Computing Services platform team.
- Work with vendors and ICT’s Technology Office to design, implement and upgrade services using change management and revision control processes to ensure that changes are properly tracked and available for audit when required.
- Analyse and troubleshoot system issues, defining, and resolving complex issues.
- Develop innovative solutions to continuously improve HPC and address shortfalls in provision.
- Maintain a knowledge of technical developments, tools, and ideas in HPC, attending seminars, conferences, technical briefings, and other community events.
- Deliver a high-quality service through a collaborative approach and outstanding analytical skills.
- Take an active part in meetings, representing the College, and facilitating collaboration between partners.
- Assist researchers to utilise the HPC resource, providing subject matter expertise support to the Research Computing Analysts.
Essential requirements
- A degree in a scientific or technical discipline or relevant experience
- Experience in designing and implementing services
- Experience in evaluating hardware and software technologies and selecting those that fit the requirements
- Experience of working in a customer orientated support service or a research/technology environment, with a positive attitude to delivery.
- Practical experience of using Linux and HPC clustered computing software stacks such as provisioning, monitoring, parallel command execution and scheduling/queuing solutions
- Knowledge of HPC environments, parallel programming methodologies and service components.
- Knowledge of operational software in an HPC environment, as used for monitoring, parallel command execution and job scheduling such as PBSPro, Slurm and Moab.
- Knowledge and experience of debugging applications.
Further information
Full description of this role can be found in the Job Description.
Please note this is a re-advertisement; previous applicants need not apply.
This is a full time and open ended role, and you will based in the South Kensington Campus.
Should you require any further details on the role please contact Andrew Richards (a.j.richards@imperial.ac.uk) or Dugan Witherick (d.witherick@imperial.ac.uk)
The College is currently trialling a Work Location Framework until early 2023. Hybrid working may be considered for this role and the role holder may be expected to work 60% or more of their time onsite, with 40% the minimum time spent onsite. The opportunity for hybrid working will be discussed at interview.
Documents
About Imperial College London
Imperial College London is the UK’s only university focussed entirely on science, engineering, medicine and business and we are consistently rated in the top 10 universities in the world.
You will find our main London campus in South Kensington, with our hospital campuses located nearby in West and North London. We also have Silwood Park in Berkshire and state-of-the-art facilities in development at our major new campus in White City.
We work in a multidisciplinary and diverse community for education, research, translation and commercialisation, harnessing science and innovation to tackle the big global challenges our complex world faces.
It’s our mission to achieve enduring excellence in all that we do for the benefit of society – and we are looking for the most talented people to help us get there.
Additional information
Please note that job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, and the post-holder may be required to undertake other duties, which are broadly in line with the above key responsibilities.
Imperial College is committed to equality of opportunity and to eliminating discrimination. All employees are expected to follow the Imperial Values & Behaviours framework. Our values are:
- Respect
- Collaboration
- Excellence
- Integrity
- Innovation
In addition to the above, employees are required to observe and comply with all College policies and regulations.
We are committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination and to creating an inclusive working environment for all. We therefore encourage candidates to apply irrespective of age, disability, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion and belief, gender reassignment, sex, or sexual orientation. We are an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Disability Confident Leader and a Stonewall Diversity Champion.
For technical issues when applying online please email support.jobs@imperial.ac.uk.
Awards

Top 10 Employer for Working Families
Top 10 employer for working families

Race Equality Charter Bronze Award
Race Equality Charter Bronze Award

Disability Confident leader
Imperial is a Disability Confident leader