Director, HPC Systems Software Engineering

About the Position

We are seeking a Director, HPC Systems Software Engineering to lead our HPC systems engineering function, ensuring reliable and scalable platform capabilities.

Locations

• Houston, United States
• New York, United States
• San Francisco, United States
• Seattle, United States

Responsibilities

Strategy, Scope & Organisational Direction

• Define and evolve the strategy for a major HPC systems engineering area, aligned with business goals, customer needs, platform priorities, and long-term service direction
• Translate company and engineering strategy into clear priorities, investment areas, and execution plans for the organisation
• Ensure HPC platform architecture, operational maturity, and delivery priorities remain aligned across teams
• Partner with Principal and Senior Staff engineers to ensure technical strategy is coherent, actionable, and executed effectively
• Balance short-term delivery pressure against long-term platform health, team sustainability, and organisational capability

Organisation Leadership & Execution

• Lead a major HPC systems engineering organisation through managers, senior technical leaders, and team-of-teams structures
• Own delivery outcomes, execution quality, service quality, and team health across the area
• Shape team topology, ownership boundaries, support models, and operating mechanisms to support effective execution at scale
• Establish the right planning, prioritisation, review, and escalation mechanisms to keep the organisation effective and accountable
• Remove systemic blockers that reduce engineering effectiveness or create avoidable delivery or operational risk

Technical Oversight & Platform Quality

• Maintain sufficient technical depth to challenge designs, evaluate trade-offs, and support strong engineering judgement across the organisation
• Ensure teams are building on sound software, systems, and operational foundations for Slurm-based and adjacent HPC services
• Sponsor major cross-team HPC platform initiatives that require coordination, investment, or organisational change
• Ensure reliability, performance, supportability, and operational maturity are treated as first-class requirements
• Build a strong partnership model with adjacent cloud-native software engineering teams so shared patterns are reused effectively

People, Capability & Leadership Development

• Hire, develop, and retain strong engineering leaders, managers, and senior HPC systems engineers
• Raise the leadership bar through coaching, feedback, succession planning, and strong performance management
• Build a healthy partnership model between engineering managers and senior ICs
• Strengthen organisational capability over time by addressing skill gaps, clarifying expectations, and improving how the organisation operates
• Foster a culture of ownership, clarity, urgency, strong engineering standards, and calm operational leadership

Cross-Functional & External Leadership

• Serve as a trusted partner to senior engineering, product, infrastructure, security, and business stakeholders
• Represent the organisation in strategic planning, executive discussions, architecture reviews, customer conversations, and partner discussions where needed
• Own budget, headcount planning, and organisational investment decisions for the area
• Ensure the HPC systems engineering organisation is positioned to support broader company goals and changing business needs
• Where relevant, support Nscale’s technical position in the broader HPC and cloud-native ecosystem

Requirements

Skills / Qualifications

• Proven experience leading a significant HPC systems, platform engineering, or infrastructure-heavy engineering organisation
• Strong technical credibility in software engineering for HPC systems, distributed infrastructure, Linux-based platforms, and production operations
• Demonstrated ability to operate at org scope, translating business and engineering strategy into team structure, priorities, and execution
• Strong track record of leading through managers and senior technical leaders rather than relying primarily on individual contribution
• Experience building high-performing engineering organisations, including hiring, leadership development, organisation design, and performance management
• Strong judgement in balancing execution, platform quality, operational risk, technical quality, and long-term investment
• Experience working closely with senior ICs to turn HPC platform strategy into practical delivery outcomes
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to explain priorities, trade-offs, and constraints clearly to senior leadership
• Experience owning budget, headcount, and planning decisions for a meaningful engineering area
• Strong understanding of GPU infrastructure, HPC scheduler environments, networking constraints, and production service maturity
• Experience with Slurm is strongly preferred; experience with Kueue or other batch scheduling technologies is valuable

Salary Range

$230,000 - $343,333 USD

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We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Bonus, equity, and/or commission programs
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation

About the Company

Nscale uses AI-powered tools to assist in reviewing and prioritising applications against the requirements of this role. All final hiring decisions are made by humans. To learn more about how AI is used and your rights, click "Learn more" below.

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