Starfish Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

TITLE: Staff Engineer, Infrastructure Platforms (HPC, Linux, Slurm, Ansible, PureStorage)

3-6 month contract-to-hire or permanent placement/FTE -(onsite in Menlo Park, CA).

 Menlo Park is a city in San Mateo County, California, located on the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. 1305 O''Brien Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.

Industry: Biotechnology Research & Development

IN A NUTSHELL - Here are some notes from Seine Client:

We prefer someone who can assist us with our major network storage projects.  As such we would prefer someone familiar with NetApp, Vast, PureStorage, and Qumulo vendor systems, NFS storage fabric, and cloud archiving (including the batch transfer system known as Starfish).  

What we need help with:

• Immediate infrastructure support due to the recent team change
• Main gap is around the HPC/Linux admin function 
• This is a hands-on support/execution role; Need someone senior who can come in, figure things out, and help keep things moving

Top priority skill sets:

• HPC / Linux administration - priority 1A
• Slurm cluster support - priority 1B
• Storage administration — NetApp and VAST; NFS-based storage
• Ansible automation
• Rocky Linux / Red Hat
• VMware / Proxmox familiarity
• AWS and Google Cloud Platform platform-level support, mainly roles/objects/rules and object storage/archive
• Starfish would be a nice-to-have for archive/backup/data movement
• Cloud is more platform/admin support, not cloud systems engineering or Terraform-heavy deployment work
• Documentation would be valuable longer term, but not the immediate priority

Environment / role context:

• On-prem HPC environment supporting computational biology/research workloads
• Roughly 75–100 Linux machines in a Slurm cluster
• Roughly 75–100 bare-metal Linux machines in a Slurm cluster, and over 200 virtual Linux VM’s.
• Mix of bare metal GPU compute nodes and some VMware/Proxmox virtualization
• Storage is primarily NetApp and VAST, all NFS
• Not a 24x7 high-pressure paging environment, but there are business-critical systems and tribal knowledge gaps that create risk

Timing / Coverage:

• Need is immediate / ASAP
• Initial on-site support in Menlo Park is strongly preferred due to the discovery and collaboration needed
• Potential flexibility for some remote work later, once everyone is comfortable that the work can be done effectively that way

DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTION FROM SEINE CLIENT:

Position Summary

The Staff Engineer, Infrastructure Platforms provides technical leadership for the engineering, automation, security, and operational excellence of Seine Client''s hybrid infrastructure platform supporting enterprise, research, and scientific computing workloads.

This role partners closely with Research, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering, Information Security, and IT Operations to design, build, automate, secure, and continuously improve infrastructure platforms spanning enterprise Linux, hybrid cloud, virtualization, enterprise storage, High Performance Computing (HPC), and modern platform services.

The ideal candidate combines deep operational expertise with a platform engineering mindset, balancing day-to-day operational ownership with long-term modernization through Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, infrastructure security, and engineering best practices.

Responsibilities

Infrastructure Strategy & Platform Engineering

• Provide technical leadership for Seine Client''s enterprise infrastructure platforms.
• Define infrastructure architecture, engineering standards, and operational best practices.
• Lead infrastructure modernization initiatives focused on automation, scalability, resiliency, and operational excellence.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend improvements that enhance operational efficiency, security, scalability, and resiliency.
• Develop reusable infrastructure services and engineering standards supporting long-term platform evolution.

Infrastructure Operations

• Own the operational lifecycle of enterprise infrastructure platforms, including planning, deployment, maintenance, lifecycle management, modernization, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and continuous improvement.
• Engineer and support enterprise Linux infrastructure supporting production, engineering, and scientific computing environments.
• Design, implement, and support hybrid cloud and on-premises enterprise infrastructure.
• Support enterprise storage, virtualization, networking, and High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms supporting research and enterprise workloads.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex infrastructure issues.
• Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and operational improvement efforts.

Automation & Infrastructure Engineering

• Lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC) initiatives using modern automation and configuration management practices.
• Develop automation that reduces manual operational effort while improving consistency, recoverability, and operational resiliency.
• Implement GitOps and infrastructure CI/CD practices where appropriate.
• Continuously improve operational efficiency through automation and engineering best practices.

Security & Operational Excellence

• Design infrastructure following Secure-by-Design principles.
• Partner with Information Security to ensure infrastructure aligns with enterprise security standards and regulatory requirements.
• Improve operational resiliency by reducing manual processes and eliminating single points of failure.
• Develop and maintain infrastructure documentation, operational runbooks, engineering standards, and knowledge-sharing materials.
• Support business continuity, disaster recovery, and operational readiness initiatives.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Partner closely with Research, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering, Information Security, and IT Operations.
• Mentor engineers while promoting collaboration, cross-training, and operational excellence.
• Lead architecture reviews, infrastructure roadmaps, and technology evaluations.
• Provide technical leadership when working with strategic vendors, consultants, and professional services organizations.
• Foster a culture of documentation, automation, operational ownership, and
• continuous improvement.