About the Opportunity

1.Job Summary

The Research Computing (RC) team at Northeastern University (NU) seeks a motivated, self-starting individual to be a member of our dynamic team as a Computational Scientist. The successful candidate will be a key link between the RC team and the research community at NU, including faculty and students across a broad range of departments, as well as outside users and partners, to help them leverage RC resources for their research and teaching.

As a Computational Scientist at NU, your primary objective will be to support and enhance the research enterprise through direct interaction with faculty and students. You will assist research groups in taking full advantage of Discovery, NU’s high performance computing (HPC) cluster installed at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). You will help with optimization of code and utilization of scheduler features to maximize throughput of jobs. In addition, you will work with research groups to help identify, implement, and improve their computational workflow, as well as assist in facilitating scientific computing solutions specific to NU researchers. As a PhD level scientist, you will also participate in grant funding opportunities, author research papers and presentations, with NU’s faculty members, carry out independent research at RC, and supervise student staff as needed.

2.Minimum Qualifications

Requirements

• Ph.D. in science (chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) or engineering required
• 7+ years of experience in computational physics or related area
• Proven experience coding in C/C++, Fortran, and/or Python
• Proven experience with multiple parallel programming paradigms, including but not limited to; MPI, OpenMP, and CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture)
• Experience in a batch HPC environment with a parallel file system using Slurm
• Experience working with researchers, students, and scientific workflows
• Experience with instrumenting, optimizing, and implementing application codes
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills
• Ability and willingness to learn new technologies and remain current with developing trends in the scientific computing community
• Demonstrated strong writing skills with an ability to document and communicate solutions to users clearly
• Desire for continuous self-improvement and maintenance of skills through training, workshops, and/or conferences
• Self-starter, with a proven track-record for formulating strategy to solve problems based on user requirements
• Ability to prioritize multiple projects and work-streams in a fast-paced environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Postdoctoral or industry equivalent work at a computing facility, or using/managing HPC resources
• Experience working with large scale machine learning models
• Experience with performance optimization, debugging, and checkpointing on massively parallel &/or high throughput codes with tools such as HPCToolkit, Vampir, GDB, Intel VTune, and DMTCP.
• Experience installing and supporting bio and chemistry codes such as NAMD, GAMESS, NWChem, QBox, Quantum Espresso, Gaussian, GROMACS, LAMMPS, etc.
• Strong publication record in their area of expertise

3.Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities

Identify the most important job duties (maximum of 5) using no more than 3-4 concise sentences. Indicate the typical percent of time required for each job duty; the total percent of time must equal 100%. Begin with the most important duty.

Percent of Time

1

• Partner with faculty and research staff to leverage NU’s HPC cluster at MGHPCC
• Work with research groups to help strategize, streamline, and implement optimized computational and data workflows on the cluster
• Participate in the research, deployment, and advertising of new technologies such as GPUs (graphic processing units), Containers, next generation storage systems (NVMe fabric, etc.), using both on-premises and public cloud resources
• Guide researchers in optimizing their codes through checkpointing, benchmarking, and parallel processing
• Troubleshoot, isolate, and resolve application errors, and other technical issues
• Benchmark application software, such as GROMACS, and develop CI/CD pipelines to manage and deploy application performance tools on the cluster
• Design, develop, and deploy innovative software environments leveraging high performance computing resources to enhance scientific workflows
• Work with NU’s research community to effectively use complementary national resources, including at national laboratories and other user facilities (ERN, TACC, NCSA, SDSC, MSI, ALCF, OLCF, OSG, etc.)

40%

2

• Help define and deploy a comprehensive scientific computational vision for NU researchers by engaging in research and authoring/co-authoring papers
• Assist in developing and writing proposals to enhance the research enterprise at NU

30%

3

• Attend scientific, RC, or HPC centric conferences relevant to the mission of RC at NU
• Communicate progress and participate in reviews with technical staff and senior management

10%

4

• Develop new and creative ways to engage the user community by conducting training & bootcamp sessions, workshops, and authoring user-facing documents, and  
• Develop, present, and maintain training sessions and workshops, both online and in-person, relevant to RC services and resources

10%

5

• Interface with senior management to develop a documentation strategy (e.g., user manuals, interface documentation, etc.)
• Supervise/mentor RC’s student staff and carry out other relevant duties as assigned

10%

Position Type

Research

Additional Information

Northeastern University considers factors such as candidate work experience, education and skills when extending an offer.  

Northeastern has a comprehensive benefits package for benefit eligible employees. This includes medical, vision, dental, paid time off, tuition assistance, wellness & life, retirement- as well as commuting & transportation. Visit https://hr.northeastern.edu/benefits/ for more information.  

Northeastern University is an equal opportunity employer, seeking to recruit and support a broadly diverse community of faculty and staff.  Northeastern values and celebrates diversity in all its forms and strives to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds cohesion. 

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or any other  characteristic protected by applicable law.

To learn more about Northeastern University’s commitment and support of diversity and inclusion, please see www.northeastern.edu/diversity .