Research Scientist I/II/Sr. - Nexus Project (PACE) (Open Rank)

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Georgia Tech is a top-ranked public research university situated in the heart of Atlanta, a diverse and vibrant city with numerous economic and cultural strengths. The Institute serves more than 45,000 students through top-ranked undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs in engineering, computing, science, business, design, and liberal arts. Georgia Tech's faculty attracted more than $1.4 billion in research awards this past year in fields ranging from biomedical technology to artificial intelligence, energy, sustainability, semiconductors, neuroscience, and national security. Georgia Tech ranks among the nation's top 20 universities for research and development spending and No. 1 among institutions without a medical school.

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Atlanta, Georgia

About the School of Office of Information Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Located in the heart of vibrant Atlanta, Georgia, the Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) team defines and manages centralized research computing services at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We facilitate research efforts and foster strategic partnerships to provide Georgia Tech researchers with an unrivaled advantage, empowering them to lead their disciplines for the advancement of science and society across the globe. In addition to high-performance computing, we incorporate emerging cloud, network, data analytics, and storage technologies. Our growing team directly supports faculty, students, and other researchers resulting in a dynamic environment filled with intellectual stimulation and continuous innovation.

The OIT (Office of Information Technology) at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia invites applications for the Partnership for Advanced Computing Environment (PACE). PACE is seeking two motivated, detail-oriented individuals to join our Nexus team and support a rapidly growing and diverse research community on the role of Research Computing Support Lead and Research Software Engineer.

PACE itself supports the GT research community directly through several campus-focused resources, including HPC, research data storage, scientific software support, and training events. These specific research scientist roles focus on helping researchers effectively use Nexus, a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded compute resource hosted at GT, built in partnership between PACE, The Center for Artificial Intelligence in Science and Engineering (ARTISAN), and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Nexus is a new Blackwell-GPU HPC cluster, designed to support AI4Science workloads, which is available to researchers nationwide through the ACCESS project. Both of these roles will work closely with the entire Nexus team, which is comprised of members of PACE, ARTISAN, and NCSA.

The ideal candidates enjoy problem solving, communicating with users, and learning new technical skills in a collaborative environment. This position is well-suited for individuals early in their research computing or research support careers who are eager to grow their expertise as well as experienced RCD professionals interested in being an early contributor to the success of a new national-scale Resource Provider. PACE provides training and mentorship to support professional development; however, candidates should have basic familiarity with Linux systems and common software tools used in research computing environments. Familiarity with the ACCESS or NAIRR ecosystems is ideal, as well as experience providing user support in a flexible, research-oriented environment.

About Nexus: The Nexus project is a new ACSS-CAT-I compute resource hosted at Georgia Tech. This project is being carried out by a team comprised of individuals from PACE, Georgia Tech's ARTISAN team, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). These positions will work closely with all of these team members, in supporting AI4Science workloads on the Nexus system.

Nexus is a tripartite project composed of the HPC resource, using the Slurm resource manager software, the Nexus Platform, which is a software layer of middleware providing clean, consistent interfaces and services for end-users, ACCESS information endpoints, and administrators, and the Nexus Team itself.

More information about Georgia Tech's Office of Information Technology can be found at: https://oit.gatech.edu

More information about Nexus can be found at nexus.gatech.edu

At this time, we have two specific appointments open for the Nexus project.

Please indicate in your cover letter which of the following roles for which you would like to be considered: Research Computing Support Lead and/or Research Software Engineer.

Research Computing Support Lead

This role will focus most strongly on user support for the Nexus system, both on the system itself and within the ACCESS ecosystem. This role will be responsible for managing ACCESS allocation requests and queries, leading development of user documentation, providing direct user support through the ACCESS ticketing system (Jira), participating in community outreach events and interfacing with ACCESS project teams.

The ability to get up and running within the ACCESS ecosystem as well as on Nexus itself quickly will be a necessity, as this position will begin while Nexus is going live. Experience with ACCESS systems like XRAS will be crucial. This role will be a critical end-user facing position, often the first point of contact for new users on the system.

This role requires excellent communication abilities, scientific software expertise, research computing experience, organizational or project management skills, knowledge of complex systems, the ability to manage multiple ongoing projects simultaneously, and the ability to rapidly contribute to the success of the Nexus project.

The ideal candidate enjoys and excels in problem-solving, communicating with users, and learning new technical skills in a collaborative environment. This position is well-suited for individuals early in their research computing or research support careers who are eager to grow their expertise as well as experienced RCD professionals interested in being an early contributor to the success of a new national-scale Resource Provider. PACE provides training and mentorship to support professional development; however, candidates should have basic familiarity with Linux systems and common software tools used in research computing environments. Familiarity with the ACCESS or NAIRR ecosystems is ideal, as well as experience providing user support in a flexible, research-oriented environment.

ACCESS project. Both roles will work closely with the entire Nexus team, which is comprised of members of PACE, ARTISAN, and NCSA.

Research Computing Support Lead Responsibilities:

Communicate daily with researchers to support their computational workflows, primarily using the ACCESS ticketing system (Jira)

Participate in consulting sessions, providing one-on-one assistance to users

Assist in debugging user workflows and jobs (Slurm, Linux, HPC, NVIDIA GPU tools)

Assist with Allocations management for the Nexus resource, through the ACCESS allocation management system (XRAS)

Analyze user focused metrics to help identify gaps and opportunities for improving research computing support

Assist with designing and teaching introductory to advanced research computing concepts, including topics commonly covered in The Carpentries workshops (https://carpentries.org/workshops/)

Present at regional and national workshops and conferences

Participate in and lead ACCESS user trainings and consultation sessions

Interface with peers at partner institutions (other ACCESS RPs)

Develop, update, and maintain user facing documentation and training materials (Git, Markdown, Readthedocs)

Develop, update, and maintain internal documentation for triage teams at NCSA to better support the national user community

Work in partnership with the distributed Nexus team to support innovative workflows, new software requests, outreach and training events, and new features of the Nexus platform

Participate in efforts to strengthen the HPC user community internally and externally, such as developing and disseminating whitepapers and best practices documents, developing and delivering training seminars, and representing PACE/Nexus in national venues including conferences and workshops.

Research Software Engineer

This position focuses primarily on management of the software available to researchers using the Nexus HPC resource and assisting researchers with their AI4Science software needs. This position is expected to engage directly with users needing support for complex workflows and AI software on Nexus. The successful candidate for this role will bring a strong background in either research computing or AI along with an ability to rapidly begin contributing to the needs of the Nexus community.

This role requires excellent communication skills, software engineering expertise, research computing experience, experience with GPUs and HPC environments, as well as familiarity with specific technologies such as containers, Linux, environment modules, MPI, package managers, NVIDIA compiler and debugging tools, and AI toolsets. Pre-existing familiarity with AI4Science software like Openfold or general AI tools like pytorch is a plus. This position will interface directly with many end-users of Nexus via the ACCESS ticketing system (Jira) as well as through deeper engagements.

ACCESS project. Both of these roles will work closely with the entire Nexus team, which is comprised of members of PACE, ARTISAN, and NCSA.

The ideal candidate enjoys and excels in problem-solving, communicating with users, and learning new technical skills in a collaborative environment. This position is well-suited for individuals early in their research computing or research support careers who are eager to grow their expertise as well as experienced RCD professionals interested in being an early contributor to the success of a new national-scale Resource Provider. PACE provides training and mentorship to support professional development; however, candidates should have basic familiarity with Linux systems and common software tools used in research computing environments. Familiarity with the ACCESS or NAIRR ecosystems is ideal, as well as experience providing user support in a flexible, research-oriented environment.

Research Software Engineer Responsibilities

Install and support user focused research software using binaries, source code, package managers, and container technologies (apptainer/podman, easybuild, spack, etc.)

Manage and document new software as requested by the community (github, markdown, readthedocs)

Update and maintain documentation for the national community on best practices for optimized workflows on Nexus

Assist in prioritization of supported domain software

Support researchers using novel workflows, and assist in development of these workflows

Support and debug user jobs or workflows on the Nexus cluster as needed

Support users needing assistance optimizing their workflows for the specific GPU types available on Nexus (Slurm, Nsight, nvidia tools, debuggers, etc.)

Support visibility of GPU metrics on the Nexus system, to enhance the optimal utilization of the resource as a whole (dcgm, Nsight, etc.)

Assist in developing systems and end-user software or tools to support AI4Science workflows (python, Bash, or other scripting languages, etc.)

Participate in user training and outreach events at national events, either leading or supporting

Interface with peers at partner institutions (other ACCESS RPs)

Work in partnership with the distributed Nexus team to support innovative workflows, new software requests, outreach and training events, and new features of the Nexus platform

Represent Nexus in RSE-specific venues nation-wide; publication of new tools, workflows, and successes will be highly encouraged

This position vacancy is an open rank announcement. Final job offer will be dependent on candidate qualifications in alignment with Research Faculty ranks as outlined in section 3.2.1 of the Georgia Tech Faculty Handbook (https://www.policylibrary.gatech.edu/faculty-handbook/3.2.1-research-faculty-hiring-and-promotion-guidelines)

Research Scientist / Engineer I

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related area

Research Scientist / Engineer II

A Master's degree and three (3) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of that degree, or

A Master's degree and five (5) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of a Bachelor's degree, or

A Doctoral degree

Senior Research Scientist / Engineer

A Master's degree and seven (7) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of that degree, or

A Master's degree and nine (9) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of a Bachelor's degree, or

A Doctoral degree and four (4) years of relevant full-time experience after completion of a Bachelor's degree.

Proposed Salaries:

Research Software Engineer: $53,204.00 - $116,445.00. Commensurate with education and experience.

Research Computing Support Lead: $53,204.00 - $117,500.00. Commensurate with education and experience.

Applicants should submit the following:

Candidates should specify which role they're most interested in within their attached cover letter but may be considered for either dependent upon skills or relevant experience. Candidates are invited to specifically highlight publications or products that are relevant to the Nexus or ACCESS projects (please include as attachments if those are not accessible).

A letter of application

1-page Research Interest statement describing their prospective/desired research activities

Curriculum vitae

List of 3 professional references

Application materials should be submitted as PDF.

Requests for information may be directed to Eric Coulter (j.eric@gatech.edu)

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This appointment is funded by NSF Award # 2505662

Applications will be considered beginning Oct 15, 2026, but the search will continue until the positions are filled.