Senior Director, Head of Scientific Computing and HPC
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Posted on:
30+ days ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
ROLE SUMMARY
The Senior Director Head of Scientific Computing and HPC will lead the global HPC function supporting critical research computing needs across drug discovery molecular modeling compound screening in-silico testing and other high-throughput scientific workloads in medicine biology chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences.
This role reports directly to the VP of AI Software and Operations and is responsible for the strategic operation modernization and lifecycle management of on-premise and cloud-based HPC environments. The current organization consists of 10 highly skilled engineers and system administrators across two main sub-domains: hardware/system infrastructure and software/application platform management. Team growth is anticipated with a focus on cloud infrastructure automation SRE and DevOps skill sets.
A critical near-term priority for this role is to lead the migration of workloads and users from an existing end-of-life cluster to a modern cloud-based HPC platform ensuring minimal disruption to scientific progress improved scalability and long-term cost efficiency.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategic Leadership & Organizational Growth
Provide strategic leadership vision and roadmap for HPC operations across on-prem and cloud environments.
Manage and expand a high-performing cross-functional HPC team with responsibilities spanning system administration infrastructure engineering application integration and user support.
Guide team development toward modern DevOps cloud-native and infrastructure-as-code approaches to HPC operations.
Define and track operational KPIs to ensure reliability performance and cost-effectiveness of HPC services.
HPC Platform Operations & Lifecycle Management
Own the end-to-end lifecycle of HPC clusters including hardware provisioning OS management workload scheduling and resource optimization.
Oversee system-level security compliance and software stack standardization across diverse scientific domains.
Drive efficient resource utilization and scheduling strategies to meet varying computational needs of internal researchers.
Lead platform modernization efforts including the retirement of legacy clusters and transition to scalable cloud infrastructure.
Cloud Migration & Hybrid Architecture
Architect and execute the migration strategy for workloads and users from the legacy on-prem cluster to cloud HPC platforms (e.g. AWS Batch Azure CycleCloud GCP HPC or custom Kubernetes-native solutions).
Collaborate with application owners and researchers to replatform or refactor workflows as needed to run effectively in cloud environments.
Establish hybrid and multi-cloud architectures where applicable supporting elasticity failover and geographic distribution.
Ensure proper governance access control and cost tracking in the cloud HPC environments.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
Act as the primary interface between the HPC function and scientific research organizations including chemistry biology pharmaceutics and AI/ML teams.
Partner closely with other technology leaders across AI data engineering cloud infrastructure cybersecurity and digital R&D.
Align HPC service offerings with evolving research requirements and scientific strategies.
Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement
Promote a culture of operational excellence reliability and service orientation within the team.
Implement modern observability and monitoring practices to proactively detect and resolve issues.
Champion automation of provisioning monitoring and maintenance tasks through scripting and infrastructure-as-code.
Drive continuous improvement through retrospectives technical design reviews and post-mortem analysis.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 15 years of experience in infrastructure engineering HPC operations or scientific computing leadership roles.
- Proven experience managing large-scale HPC environments supporting research or scientific workloads.
- Deep technical knowledge of Linux-based systems HPC job schedulers (e.g. Slurm PBS LSF) and distributed storage systems (e.g. WEKA Lustre GPFS BeeGFS).
- Demonstrated leadership in migrating on-premise workloads to cloud-based HPC platforms.
- Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure platforms such as AWS Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Familiarity with DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools (e.g. Terraform Ansible Pulumi).
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical teams and manage large-scale platform operations.
- Excellent interpersonal communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering Physics Computational Biology or a related technical discipline.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience supporting computational science workloads in life sciences including biology chemistry pharmacology or computational drug discovery.
- Strong understanding of scientific software environments containers (e.g. Singularity Docker) and workload orchestration.
- Experience implementing or operating Kubernetes- or SLURM-based HPC platforms or hybrid HPC-cloud environments.
- Familiarity with cloud-native HPC solutions such as AWS ParallelCluster Azure CycleCloud or Kubernetes-native workflow engines (e.g. Argo Workflows Nextflow).
- Practical knowledge of SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) practices monitoring and observability tools (e.g. Prometheus Grafana ELK stack).
- Prior involvement in cluster decommissioning and workload migration planning.
- Advanced degree (Masters or PhD) in a relevant technical or scientific field.
- Certifications in AWS Azure GCP or relevant DevOps/cloud technologies.
Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers develop and coach others oversee and guide the work of other colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact.
Last Date to Apply for Job: 10/14/2025
The annual base salary for this position ranges from $184200.00 to $307000.00. In addition this position is eligible for participation in Pfizers Global Performance Plan with a bonus target of 22.5% of the base salary and eligibility to participate in our share based long term incentive program. We offer comprehensive and generous benefits and programs to help our colleagues lead healthy lives and to support each of lifes moments. Benefits offered include a 401(k) plan with Pfizer Matching Contributions and an additional Pfizer Retirement Savings Contribution paid vacation holiday and personal days paid caregiver/parental and medical leave and health benefits to include medical prescription drug dental and vision coverage. Learn more at Pfizer Candidate Site U.S. Benefits (). Pfizer compensation structures and benefit packages are aligned based on the location of hire. The United States salary range provided applies to the Tampa FL location only. The salary range provided does not apply to any other United States location or locations outside of the United States.Relocation assistance may be available based on business needs and/or eligibility.
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