Research User Computing Lead

About the role

Platform architecture and operations

• Set Linux workstation fleet architecture and direction, including configuration, provisioning, inventory, patching, access control, security, and lifecycle management.
• Establish infrastructure-as-code, GitOps, automation, and engineering standards for Linux and provide technical direction for Windows and macOS platforms.
• Lead and document tooling and build-versus-buy decisions for provisioning, configuration management, secrets, observability, and fleet operations.
• Own physical and remote scientific workstation design and improvement for secure, high-performance research and teaching access.
• Oversee provisioning, patch orchestration, inventory, drift detection, observability, reliability, and service continuity.

Security, hardware, and team leadership

• Own host hardening, secrets management, audit logging, compliance baselines, and alignment with NIST 800-171 and CIS Benchmarks.
• Define hardware standards, refresh cycles, model validation, driver compatibility, firmware/BIOS automation, and lifecycle plans.
• Lead, mentor, supervise, and develop Linux, Windows, and macOS platform engineers; serve as senior escalation point for complex endpoint issues.

Partnership and service improvement

• Work with faculty, researchers, students, vendors, and internal IT to translate research and teaching needs into sustainable platform services.
• Partner with network, security, IAM, storage, and advanced computing teams on integrated, secure, compliant services.
• Update senior IT leadership on platform direction, risks, lifecycle planning, investment needs, and improvements.

Required qualifications and experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• Extensive Linux, infrastructure, endpoint, or platform engineering experience with ownership of systems at scale.
• Production declarative configuration-management experience, preferably Puppet or Ansible; infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices using Git, code review, and CI/CD.
• Experience with large Linux endpoint fleets, ideally 500+ Ubuntu and Rocky Linux endpoints, and with provisioning, patching, security, observability, hardware lifecycle, firmware/BIOS automation, and compliance.
• Working knowledge of NAC, 802.1X, RADIUS, certificate-based authentication, endpoint supplicants, and provisioning or break-glass scenarios.
• Technical leadership, architecture decisions, mentoring, engineering-practice improvement, stakeholder engagement, and priority management experience.
• High-performance or GPU-enabled scientific computing experience, including NVIDIA/CUDA, performance tuning, and workload-specific desktop needs.

Preferred qualifications

• Master’s degree in a relevant technical or management discipline is preferred.
• Preferred certifications include RHCE, LPIC, Puppet Certified Professional or equivalent, relevant networking/security certification, ITIL Foundation or higher, CISSP, CISM, or CompTIA Security+.