Job Description:

ASRC Federal is a technology company specializing in delivering High-Performance Computing (HPC) and IT solutions to a variety of federal government clients. ASRC Federal proudly supports the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a diverse agency tasked with protecting and promoting U.S. agricultural health, regulating genetically engineered organisms, enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, and managing wildlife damage. These efforts align with the broader mission of the USDA to safeguard and advance food, agriculture, natural resources, and related sectors.

We are seeking an HPC Systems Administrator to join our team in Manhattan, KS. This role supports cutting-edge research by managing centrally operated HPC, storage, and visualization resources. These resources include advanced hardware and software, expert scientific and technical user support, and education and training to empower researchers in fully leveraging modern HPC technologies.

Major Duties & Responsibilities:

• Perform standard Linux System Administration duties as required to maintain smooth operation of multi-user computer systems consisting of Linux-based application and license servers, virtual machines, GP/GPU cluster-based systems, and high-performance Lustre storage.
• Setting up end user, administrator, and service accounts, maintaining system documentation, tuning system performance, installing system-wide software, and allocating filesystem space.
• Developing and monitoring policies and standards for allocation related to the use of computing resources.

• Maintain support requests from internal engineers regarding all account management and system configuration issues.

Skills:

• Have the ability to obtain a USDA Tier 4 - High-Risk Public Trust (commonly referred to as T4) clearance
• Willing to work 100% onsite in a secure environment
• Linux skills (5-7 years admin): Install/update/administer Linux (Red Hat). Be able to manage bare-metal hardware installs (pxe/manual/automated install of OS). Working skillset including users, applications, OS packages, kernel/OS configuration, networks, firewall, security/hardening (STIG, OSCAP).
• Experience with high performance parallel filesystems (Lustre, GPFS/Storage Scale, BeeGFS).
• Hardware skills (5-7 years, various hardware vendors: SM/HPE): Hands-on experience racking systems, connecting networks, and directly attaching storage devices. BMC management/firmware updates/setup. Familiar with storage hardware: NAS, SAN, direct attach, sata/sas/nvme drive.
• Working knowledge of PCIe cards: Raid/network/GPU/other.
• High-speed interconnect fabrics (e.g. InfiniBand, Omni-path, RoCE)
• HPC batch schedulers (e.g. SLURM, PBSpro, OpenPBS )
• Able to work with users and help them understand how HPC systems function
• A working knowledge of cluster management software (Bright Cluster Manager, xCAT, Warewulf, Rocks, Scyld) or similar Linux-based image management tools.

Preferred:

• Experience with Bright Cluster Manager (now named Base Command Manager)
• Familiar with multi-factor authentication platforms and solutions, and Identity Management/PIV such as OpenID, LDAP, and Kerberos.
• Experience programming or troubleshooting Python code, supporting Apache Web Server, BIND DNS, Ansible, and Gitlab
• Working knowledge of InfiniBand.
• Experience with Lustre filesystems, in particular HPE ClusterStor, and managing a data management solution for the storage systems that utilize the StarFish Storage Software
• Knowledge of basic Python environment management, in particular tools such as Anaconda, Miniconda, pip, and/or Jupyter Notebooks.
• Experience with high performance parallel applications utilizing the MPI framework.