Junior HPC Applications Engineer

About Parallel Works

Parallel Works builds and operates ACTIVATE, a control plane for high performance computing and AI. Our customers run large scientific and AI workloads across their own on-premises clusters, Government and commercial cloud, and commercial GPU providers, and ACTIVATE gives them one way in to all of it. The high security boundary is authorized at Impact Level 5, with FIPS validated cryptography and STIG hardening throughout.

The work reaches most fields that depend on computing at scale: weather and climate forecasting, defense and intelligence programs, aerospace and structural analysis, molecular and materials science, energy, and AI research. A quarter here can include standing up a GPU cluster for one of those communities, federating a laboratory's existing on-premises system with burst capacity it did not have before, and getting a domain code written decades ago to run on current hardware.

Customer success sets our priorities. We are a small engineering company, so engineers here work directly with the people using the systems and carry a problem from the first report through to the fix. This is what we call mission engineering: understanding what a customer is trying to accomplish and why the computing matters to it.

About the role

Parallel Works is hiring a Junior HPC Applications Engineer to support the researchers and engineers running work on our platforms. The role handles first line support: build failures, batch script problems, environment issues, and the first diagnosis on failed jobs.

It suits someone who has run scientific or machine learning workloads on a cluster as a user and wants to move to the other side of the ticket. Our users work across on-premises clusters, cloud, and commercial GPU providers, and the same question often has a different answer in each. The role works alongside a senior applications engineer, building software stacks for users and handling second tier diagnosis after about a year.

What you will do

• First line support: own incoming tickets, reproduce the problem, resolve what you can, and escalate the rest with a diagnosis attached.
• Batch scripts: write, debug, and tune Slurm submission scripts with users, including GPU requests, array jobs, and resource sizing.
• Environments and modules: build and install user requested software under senior review, and maintain module and container environments.
• Onboarding: walk new users through access, storage layout, and first jobs when a cluster comes online.
• Documentation: user guides and FAQ entries that cut repeat tickets.
• Coverage rotation: a support coverage rotation. Some engagements carry coverage outside standard United States business hours, agreed in advance.

Requirements

• 2 or more years supporting users on Linux systems, or running scientific or machine learning workloads on a cluster as a practitioner.
• Comfort on the Linux command line, including building software from source.
• Writing and debugging batch scripts under Slurm, PBS, or LSF.
• Proficiency with Python, plus either a machine learning framework or a domain scientific code.
• Writing a complete, correct answer to a user in plain language.
• United States citizenship and eligibility for a Secret clearance, since the work reaches export controlled Government environments. An active clearance is helpful but not required. We sponsor candidates who are eligible but not currently cleared.
• You do not need every item on this list. If you have most of it and work well with other people, apply.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Spack, EasyBuild, or Lmod.
• Multi-GPU or multi-node job experience.
• Use of containers such as Apptainer, Singularity, or Docker.
• Exposure to any profiling or debugging tooling.
• Graduate coursework or a research computing background, or time on a university or laboratory HPC help desk.