HPC Infrastructure Technical Lead

At AstraZeneca, Scientific Computing is a strategic asset underpinning our advances in science. Our research into disease and creating new medicines critically depends on continuously developing and refining best-in-class computing capabilities and the engineering teams supporting them. 

We are looking for a highly motivated individual to lead HPC Infrastructure as part of our platform leadership team.  If you combine excitement for HPC technology with a passion for science, and an understanding of balancing agile innovation with providing an enterprise-quality service, then we want to hear from you 

The Scientific Computing platform (SCP) is AstraZeneca’s primary platform supporting exploratory research, and underpins every stage of drug development from target validation through to compound selection for clinical trials. At its heart it provides some key capabilities: 

• HPC clusters on-prem, in the cloud and through external partnerships 

• Applications and software packages the scientists need to perform their research 

• Expertise to help scientists optimise their workflows and accelerate the development of new medical treatments. 

A critical ability is to maintain the flexibility to adjust and adapt according to changing requirements and follow the science. 

The SCP department comprises 50-60 individuals across three core technical areas (HPC Infrastructure, Software Infrastructure, and Applications), a Business Engagement team, an Operations team, and a small Program Management team. 

About this role 

As the HPC Infrastructure Technical Lead, you will be leading a team of 10-15 engineers and be engaged in a variety of activities including responsibility for 

• Working with scientific users to understand their needs, and develop solutions 

• Horizon scanning, identifying the future technologies needed to stay innovative 

• Defining the roadmap for the platform’s HPC infrastructure 

• Prioritising the work backlog for the team according to scientific needs 

• Ensuring delivery of team objectives, both for on-premises clusters and in the cloud 

• Mentoring and coaching engineers 

• Investigating and resolving complex operational incidents 

• Ensuring the timely adoption of cloud services for all of SCP’s needs 

AstraZeneca is committed to promoting a healthy work-life balance, and this role is a hybrid role allowing flexible working, 60% in the office. 

Essential Skills 

• Experience leading the engineering for large-scale computing environments, such as HPC, HTC for scientific research, preferably in Life Sciences (e.g. Pharmaceutical Industry, BioTech) 

• You can demonstrate a deep understanding of HPC architectures and the factors influencing their performance , including: 

• Processor and accelerator architectures 

• HPC high performance network technologies, such as Infiniband, low latency ethernet at 100Gbit and above 

• High performance storage systems (e.g. GPFS, Lustre, Weka) 

• Strong understanding of HPC scheduling systems (e.g. SLURM, LSF) 

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical topics to non-experts, and interpret scientific needs in terms of IT 

• Operation and configuration of public cloud computing infrastructure (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP), especially in an HPC context 

• Experience working with distributed DevOps teams using agile methods, and using other project management techniques when appropriate 

Desired Skills & Background 

• Experience optimising HPC inftastructure for applications commonly used in drug discovery; e.g. molecular dynamics, genomics and machine learning 

• Experience deploying and operating OpenStack 

• Experience with a variety of programming languages and frameworks, used in research computing and AI (MPI, C/C++, CUDA, Pytorch/Tensorflow, Python/conda, R) 

• You will have a bachelor’s degree or higher in Computational, Physical or Biological Science, Engineering or equivalent area 

So, what’s next! 

Are you already imagining yourself joining our team? Good, because we can’t wait to hear from you.  If you are interested, apply now but no later than June 23.

About AstraZeneca 

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines for the world's most serious diseases. AstraZeneca is one of only a handful of pure-play biopharmaceutical companies to span the entire value chain of a medicine from discovery, early- and late-stage development to manufacturing and distribution, and the global commercialization of primary care, specialty care-led and specialty care medicines that transform lives. 

Our primary focus is on three key areas of healthcare: Cardiovascular and Metabolic disease (CVMD); Oncology; and Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA). We are also active in the Infection, Neuroscience and Gastrointestinal (ING) disease areas. 

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