HPC Operations Lead

HPC Infrastructure Operations Lead

Location: Chicago or New York (On-site 5 days/week; regular travel to HPC data center sites required)

Jump Trading Group is committed to world class research. We empower exceptional talents in Mathematics Physics and Computer Science to seek scientific boundaries push through them and apply cutting edge research to global financial markets. Our culture is unique. Constant innovation requires fearlessness creativity intellectual honesty and a relentless competitive streak. We believe in winning together and unlocking unique individual talent by incenting collaboration and mutual respect. At Jump research outcomes drive more than superior risk adjusted returns. We design develop and deploy technologies that change our world fund start-ups across industries and partner with leading global research organizations and universities to solve problems.

Trading Infrastructure is a global organization of Engineers who architect build and maintain our world-class infrastructure. From colo design/implementation to optimizing our exchange connectivity to building world class low latent Wide Area Networks we leverage research and automation to consistently adapt and innovate our infrastructure to scale and drive our trading and evolving business.

Jumps HPC infrastructure powers some of the most demanding computational workloads in the industry. As our HPC footprint grows we need a seasoned operations leader to own the reliability standards and day-to-day excellence of these environments. This role leads the teams that keep the lights on across Jumps HPC data centers ensuring maximum uptime through disciplined operations proactive maintenance and deep technical expertise in critical facility systems. Heavy daily use of AI tools is expected in this roleto accelerate decision-making automate operational workflows analyze data center telemetry and continuously raise the bar on how the team operates.

What Youll Do:

Team Leadership & Organizational Ownership
- Lead and manage data center site leads and their teams across multiple HPC facilities; site leads report directly to this role.
- Recruit mentor and develop team members while conducting performance reviews and building a culture of operational rigor.
- Direct onsite contractors by providing clear scope and validating completed work.

HPC Data Center Standards Processes & Preventative Maintenance
- Develop document and enforce operational standards and procedures for Jumps HPC data centers covering power cooling cabling and hardware lifecycle.
- Design and own the preventative maintenance program including scheduled inspections component replacements and firmware/capacity reviews to minimize unplanned downtime.
- Drive continuous improvement of operational processes and pursue automationincluding AI-driven approachesto reduce manual effort and human error.

Critical Facility Systems Expertise
- Serve as the subject matter authority on HPC data center power distribution power striping strategies and failover/redundancy configurations.
- Own expertise across air cooling liquid cooling (direct-to-chip rear-door CDU-based) and hybrid cooling architectures.
- Maintain deep knowledge of environmental monitoring and controls (temperature humidity airflow leak detection) and ensure systems remain within design parameters.

Monitoring & Incident Response
- Own the HPC data center monitoring strategy end-to-end: define what is monitored set alerting thresholds and ensure comprehensive visibility into facility and hardware health.
- Leverage AI tools to analyze telemetry data identify failure patterns predict potential issues and accelerate root cause analysis during incidents.
- Lead critical incident response and drive root cause analysis and corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
- Establish and track operational KPIs including availability mean time to repair and efficiency metrics.

Server & Switch Hardware Expertise
- Maintain deep hands-on knowledge of server hardware architectures including multi-socket platforms GPU/accelerator configurations memory subsystems NVMe/storage controllers BMC/IPMI management and firmware lifecycle.
- Maintain deep hands-on knowledge of network switch hardware including line cards optics/transceivers switch fabrics and platform-specific diagnostics for Arista and Cisco platforms.
- Evaluate new hardware platforms drive hardware qualification and acceptance testing and provide informed recommendations on hardware selection.

Hardware Break-Fix
- Own the overall hardware break-fix function across all HPC sites ensuring rapid diagnosis and resolution for servers GPUs network equipment storage and facility infrastructure.
- Diagnose complex hardware failures at the component levelCPUs DIMMs GPUs NICs PSUs fans drives switch line cards and opticsand direct the team to resolve efficiently.
- Establish escalation paths SLA targets and reporting for hardware failures.

Inventory & Spares Management
- Own inventory processes and spares tracking across all HPC facilities ensuring critical spares are stocked tracked and replenished to meet availability targets.
- Maintain accurate asset records for all serialized and consumable inventory.

Planning Vendor & Budget Management
- Conduct capacity planning for space power cooling and cabling to stay ahead of growth.
- Gather requirements and plan new hardware installations including physical placement power/cooling needs and cabling.
- Manage relationships with colocation providers and hardware vendors; negotiate contracts and SLAs.
- Develop and manage operational budgets for equipment staffing and facilities.

Networking & Linux
- Possess strong working knowledge of networking concepts including L2/L3 protocols VLANs BGP OSPF LACP ECMP and high-performance fabrics relevant to HPC environments.
- Understand network architectures such as spine-leaf fat-tree and high-radix topologies used in HPC clusters.
- Maintain strong Linux systems knowledgecomfortable navigating and troubleshooting at the OS level including storage networking process management log analysis and system diagnostics.

AI-Driven Operations
- Use AI tools daily across all aspects of the role: writing and reviewing documentation analyzing operational data drafting procedures managing communications and problem-solving.
- Champion AI adoption within the teamset the expectation that every team member integrates AI into their daily workflows.
- Identify and implement opportunities where AI can replace or augment manual operational processes.

Cross-Team Partnership
- Partner with HPC Engineering Network Engineering and other teams to align operations with research and business needs.
- Ensure compliance with all safety security and regulatory requirements.

Travel
- Travel regularly to Jumps HPC data center sites for operational oversight project execution and team engagement. This is a core requirement of the role.

Additional duties as assigned or needed.

Skills Youll Need:

- Minimum 7 years of data center operations experience with at least 3 years leading teams in 24/7 critical infrastructure environments. HPC environment experience strongly preferred.
- In-depth knowledge of data center power systems power distribution/striping and failover/redundancy architectures.
- In-depth knowledge of cooling technologies including air cooling liquid cooling (direct-to-chip rear-door heat exchangers CDUs) and environmental control systems.
- Proven experience building and maintaining preventative maintenance programs and operational standards/procedures.
- Strong experience with data center monitoring platforms (DCIM BMS environmental sensors) and defining monitoring/alerting strategies.
- Demonstrates a high level of energy results driven and able to work under pressure with tight deadlines.

Technical Skills:

- Deep knowledge of server hardware architectures: multi-socket platforms GPU/accelerator systems memory subsystems NVMe storage BMC/IPMI and firmware management.
- Deep knowledge of network switch hardware: line cards optics/transceivers switch fabrics and platform diagnostics across Arista and Cisco platforms.
- Proven hardware break-fix experience with the ability to diagnose failures at the component level (CPUs DIMMs GPUs NICs PSUs drives line cards optics).
- Strong understanding of networking concepts: L2/L3 protocols VLANs BGP OSPF LACP ECMP and HPC network topologies (spine-leaf fat-tree).
- Strong Linux systems proficiencywell beyond basic CLI usage. Comfortable with OS-level troubleshooting storage and network configuration process management log analysis and system diagnostics.
- Experience managing inventory and spares programs for critical infrastructure.
- Structured cabling standards expertise.
- Programming/scripting experience (Python preferred) is a plus.
- Demonstrated heavy use of AI tools (e.g. LLM-based assistants AI coding tools AI-driven analytics) in a professional setting. You should already be using AI daily and be eager to push its application further across operations.
- Strong project management skills with multi-site infrastructure deployment experience.
- Knowledge of industry standards including ASHRAE and TIA-942.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Meet physical requirements including working on ladders/elevated platforms and lifting up to 50 lbs.
- Extremely high personal standards for work quality and operational discipline.
- Reliable and predictable availability including ability to work evenings and weekends as required.
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly to data center sites.
- Bachelors degree preferred.