Platform Engineer (HPC & AI Infrastructure)
The High Performance Computing group at ETH Zurich provides world-class HPC and AI/ML infrastructure to researchers across all departments. We operate compute clusters with thousands of CPUs and GPUs, petabytes of storage, and high-speed, low-latency networks across multiple data centres in Switzerland.
As research workloads continue to evolve, we are building a hybrid and open platform that brings together traditional HPC and modern AI workloads.
We are looking for a Platform Engineer with a passion for Linux, automation, and open-source technologies to help us build and operate this infrastructure.
Job description
You will play a key role in automating and operating a large-scale, distributed computing platform. You will work with modern open-source technologies in a vendor-neutral ecosystem and contribute to building a highly reliable and efficient environment for scientific workloads.
What you will do
- Automate infrastructure provisioning and operational workflows using modern IaC tools
- Operate, troubleshoot, and improve Linux systems on both bare metal and virtual infrastructure
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines
- Build and operate on-premise cloud services based on Kubernetes
- Design and maintain observability platforms using metrics, logs, dashboards, and alerting systems
- Support core infrastructure services such as DNS, DHCP, and HTTP
- Troubleshoot networking issues involving TCP/IP, routing, and firewalls
- Occasional datacenter floor work (racking, cabling, bare-metal troubleshooting and repairs)
Profile
You are a curious and motivated engineer with a passion for automation and new technologies. You enjoy working collaboratively in a team while also being able to take ownership of tasks independently. Strong communication skills in English are essential, enabling you to work effectively in our international environment.
Required technical experience and skills
- Solid experience operating Linux systems in production environments
- Experience automating repetitive operational tasks
- Experience with shell scripting (Bash) and programming in at least one language such as Python, Go or Rust
- Familiarity with Kubernetes, Prometheus and Grafana
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management (e.g. Cdist, Ansible, Terraform or similar)
- Basic understanding of TCP/IP networking, routing and firewalls
Nice to have
- Hands-on experience with HPC technologies such as InfiniBand networks and multi-GPU systems
- Experience deploying or operating Lustre or other parallel file systems
- Familiarity with Slurm, Spack, and scientific software environments
- Experience with hardware provisioning and out-of-band management technologies such as BMC, IPMI and Redfish
- German language skills