HPC Systems Engineer, Consumer Products

About the Team

The Consumer Products Infrastructure team builds and operates the high-performance computing platforms that support product design, simulation, and validation across OpenAI’s consumer-facing hardware and software efforts. We partner closely with product engineers, designers, and applied scientists to ensure fast iteration cycles, predictable performance, and highly available systems that directly impact shipped products.

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced HPC Systems Engineer to design, scale, and operate large-scale HPC environments that power simulation-driven product development. These clusters support 1,000+ compute nodes per environment and are used heavily for engineering simulations such as FEA, CFD, multiphysics, and optimization that inform real-world product decisions.

In this role, you will work directly with consumer product and simulation engineers to optimize scheduling, reduce iteration latency, ensure license availability, and maintain highly reliable on-prem and hybrid-cloud HPC systems that accelerate product timelines.

In this role, you will:

• Architect, deploy, and operate large-scale HPC clusters (1,000+ nodes) supporting simulation workloads critical to consumer product development (Abaqus, Ansys, COMSOL, LS-DYNA, and similar tools).

• Optimize workload management using NC, IBM/Platform LSF, and Slurm, with a focus on throughput, fairness, and minimizing queue wait times for product teams.

• Design and implement strategies for workload balancing, cluster federation, and multi-scheduler environments that support diverse product workflows.

• Partner closely with product design, mechanical, electrical, and simulation engineers to debug jobs, improve parallel scaling, and accelerate design-to-validation cycles.

• Administer and harden Linux-based HPC systems (RHEL, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux), including patching, kernel tuning, and performance optimization.

• Operate and optimize software licensing infrastructure (FlexLM, DSLS, LUM, RLM) to maximize utilization and prevent license-related development bottlenecks.

• Deploy and manage Azure CycleCloud and/or TotalCAE to enable elastic capacity, cloud bursting, and hybrid HPC workflows during peak product development cycles.

• Configure and tune high-speed interconnects, including InfiniBand (HDR/EDR/FDR), to support low-latency, tightly coupled simulation workloads.

• Design and maintain high-performance storage systems (NFS, DFS, Lustre, GPFS / Spectrum Scale, BeeGFS, Azure NetApp) optimized for simulation I/O patterns.

• Build automation and internal tooling using Python and Bash to streamline provisioning, monitoring, diagnostics, and job submission workflows.

• Implement monitoring, alerting, and capacity planning systems (Grafana/Prometheus, Slurm accounting, LSF monitoring) to ensure predictable performance for product teams.

• Ensure high availability and resiliency across globally distributed HPC clusters and hybrid cloud environments.

• Manage authentication, networking, and secure access (LDAP/AD integration, networking, VPNs).

• Produce clear documentation on cluster architecture, policies, and best practices tailored to consumer product engineering workflows.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale HPC clusters (1,000+ nodes).

• Deep expertise with NC, IBM/Platform LSF, and Slurm workload managers.

• Strong Linux system administration experience (RHEL-family preferred).

• Hands-on experience with MPI, parallel scaling, and performance tuning for simulation workloads.

• Experience using Azure CycleCloud to provision and manage HPC clusters in hybrid cloud environments.

• Proven experience operating InfiniBand or other high-speed interconnects.

• Strong Python and Bash skills for automation, tooling, and workflow optimization.

• Experience with distributed filesystems (NFS, DFS, Lustre, GPFS, BeeGFS).

• Deep familiarity with HPC licensing systems (FlexLM, DSLS, RLM, LUM).

• Experience supporting product-oriented engineering or simulation teams.

• Strong networking fundamentals (DNS, DHCP, VLANs, routing, security).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience supporting simulation-driven consumer product development (hardware, devices, or integrated systems).

• Familiarity with containerized HPC workflows (Apptainer/Singularity).

• Exposure to infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Ansible.

• Experience with HPC profiling and performance analysis tools (VTune, mpiP, TAU, Nsight).

• Background in consumer electronics, product design, automotive, aerospace, or similar environments.

• Strong cross-functional communication skills and a collaborative working style.

• High-ownership mindset with comfort operating in fast-moving, product-critical environments.

• Strong debugging instincts and attention to operational detail.

• Clear documentation habits and a user-centric approach to infrastructure design.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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