Role Summary
Responsible for the setup, maintenance, security, and day-to-day operation of a technical/research lab environment (servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and lab-issued workstations), ensuring high availability, performance, and compliance with organizational policies.
Key Responsibilities
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Install, configure, and maintain lab hardware (servers, storage arrays, NICs, switches) and software (OS images, drivers, monitoring tools)
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Manage user access, accounts, and permissions across lab systems
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Monitor system health, performance, and capacity (CPU, memory, storage, network utilization)
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Troubleshoot hardware/software issues and coordinate with vendors for support/RMAs
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Maintain documentation: network diagrams, asset inventories, configuration baselines, SOPs
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Implement and enforce security policies (patching, firewall rules, access controls)
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Manage backups, disaster recovery procedures, and data retention policies
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Support researchers/engineers with environment setup for experiments, benchmarks, or testing (e.g., provisioning compute nodes, storage volumes, network configs)
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Track licensing, warranties, and hardware lifecycle (procurement to decommissioning)
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Coordinate lab scheduling/resource allocation if shared across teams
Required Skills/Qualifications
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Strong Linux administration experience (Ubuntu/RHEL/CentOS)
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Networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, VLANs, bonding/LACP, basic troubleshooting)
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Experience with storage systems (SAN/NAS, parallel filesystems like Lustre/GPFS a plus)
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Scripting ability (Bash, Python) for automation
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Familiarity with virtualization/containerization (KVM, Docker) is a plus
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Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus/Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix)
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Understanding of hardware components (CPUs, NUMA architecture, PCIe, NICs/RDMA)
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Good documentation and communication skills
Nice to Have
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Experience with HPC/AI infrastructure (InfiniBand, RDMA, GPU clusters)
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Experience with configuration management (Ansible, Puppet)