Are you a Linux-savvy IT professional who thrives at the intersection of systems administration and High-Performance Computing (HPC)?
We are looking for a Part-Time IT Systems & HPC Infrastructure Specialist to manage our technical environment. While we have 30 employees who need standard support, our additional challenge lies in maintaining the high-performance compute farms and cloud-bursting capabilities that drive our engineering team.
Currently, these tasks are handled by our senior engineers; we are looking for a dedicated specialist to take over the tactical management of our local and cloud infrastructure, ensuring our compute-heavy workloads run reliably and securely, as well as helping enhance and maintain our standard office IT infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- HPC (High-Performance Computing) - Ensuring engineers have the compute and tools needed for their work.
- Compute Management: Manage and optimize job scheduling tools (SLURM, LSF-like) for heavy compute loads.
- Hardware Acceleration: Ensure optimal GPU access (both local and cloud-based).
- DevOps & Infrastructure - Automation, security, and the "invisible" backbone that keeps systems running reliably.
- Infrastructure Automation: Use Ansible to deploy, configure, and maintain on-premises servers (Proxmox/bare-metal) and cloud environments.
- Containerization & Data Pipelines: Facilitate data pipelines utilizing Kubernetes, Docker, and containers.
- Security & IAM: Manage identity and authentication (LDAP, SSSD, SAML) and maintain firewall rules (Fortinet).
- Data Integrity: Maintain a rigorous backup/snapshot regime and ensure all SaaS data (e.g. GitLab, Coda) is archived to the NAS.
- Business Continuity: Establish disaster recovery procedures and conduct security audits/log monitoring.
- Helpdesk & IT Operations - Supporting the human element and managing the physical office technology.
- User Support: Provide essential support for the ~ 30 users (troubleshooting hardware, app freezes, network latency).
- Endpoint Management: Deploy and maintain Operating Systems (Windows/macOS) and manage ESET/Google Admin consoles.
- Life Cycle Management: Onboarding/Offboarding employees and providing training on security/IT tools.
- Vendor Relations: Act as the technical point of contact for partners and third-party service providers.
- HPC (High-Performance Computing)
- HPC Experience: Practical familiarity with job schedulers (SLURM/LSF).
- Workload Management: Experience managing high-compute workloads, specifically involving CPU and GPU resource allocation.
- Performance Optimization: Ability to troubleshoot performance bottlenecks at the system level (memory, daemon processes, latency).
- DevOps & Infrastructure
- Infrastructure as Code: Proficiency in Ansible for automated deployment and configuration.
- Linux Administration: A strong background in Linux System Administration (the primary OS for your servers and compute nodes).
- Networking & Security: Practical knowledge of firewall management (e.g., Fortinet). Identity management expertise with LDAP and SSSD. Experience with system logging for proactive security monitoring.
- AI & Automation Mindset
- AI Curious: You are familiar with the current AI landscape and have experimented with AI agents or LLM-assisted workflows to automate your own work.
- Automation-First: You naturally lean toward scripting and agentic solutions rather than manual, repetitive fixes.
- Helpdesk & IT Operations
- General IT: Proficiency in managing Windows and macOS endpoints (onboarding, cleanup, and troubleshooting).
- SaaS Administration: Experience with Google Workspace administration and partner integrations (e.g., Coda, GitLab).
- Mobile/Endpoint Tools: Comfort using MDM consoles (Apple Business Manager, ESET, Google Admin).
- You are a tactical executor. You don't need to be the chief architect, but you should be able to take strategic input and handle the "how-to" of the deployment autonomously.
- Logistics: Flexibility to support both Leuven and Meylan sites (remote/on-site split negotiable).
Why this role?
This isn’t a “typical” IT support role. You will be working with a sophisticated, hybrid stack that bridges high-performance on-premises clusters with advanced cloud-native data tools.
It is an ideal position for a technical generalist who enjoys deep-level infrastructure variety—moving from automation and compute orchestration to security and user support—while working in a flexible, part-time capacity within a high-growth technical environment.
TECHNICAL & MARKET ANALYSIS | Appended by Quantum.Jobs
The structural convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum processing units (QPUs) necessitates a specialized tier of systems infrastructure expertise to manage hybrid architectural dependencies. As the industry moves from isolated experimental setups toward integrated production environments, the role of an IT Systems and HPC Infrastructure Specialist becomes critical for ensuring the operational stability of complex compute stacks. This function addresses the fundamental TRL gap between raw hardware capabilities and accessible enterprise-grade resources by orchestrating the middleware and networking layers required for low-latency classical-quantum interfacing. Market signals from major cloud providers and national supercomputing centers emphasize that the ability to maintain high-availability, hyperconverged environments is now a primary determinant for institutional research throughput.
The global quantum ecosystem is currently navigating a pivotal transition where the bottleneck has shifted from individual qubit counts to the systemic integration of heterogeneous compute nodes. Macro-level analysis suggests that while hardware modalities continue to diversify, the infrastructure supporting these systems remains fragmented, creating significant barriers to scalable adoption. This role type sits at the intersection of the systems and enablement layers of the value chain, providing the architectural continuity required for researchers to deploy variational algorithms and error-correction protocols within existing HPC workflows.
Infrastructure dependencies represent a significant macro constraint, as the specialized cooling and vibration isolation requirements of quantum hardware must be harmonized with the power-dense requirements of classical supercomputing clusters. Ongoing ecosystem initiatives aim to accelerate readiness for practical quantum applications by standardizing the software-defined infrastructure that facilitates this hybrid offloading. Furthermore, the global shortage of talent capable of managing Linux high-availability clusters within deep-tech environments has elevated this function to a strategic priority for organizations seeking to maintain a competitive R&D cadence.
As public funding cycles increasingly prioritize sovereign quantum capabilities, the deployment of secure, on-premise HPC-QC nodes is becoming a national strategic imperative. This trend favors the development of modular infrastructure blueprints that can support the rapid scaling of experimental workloads without disrupting established production baselines. By securing the foundational uptime and data integrity of these systems, infrastructure specialists provide the structural leverage necessary for the broader quantum workforce to iterate on algorithm development and hardware benchmarking.
The capability architecture for this role centers on the orchestration of high-performance networking, distributed storage, and containerized deployment environments optimized for low-latency execution. Mastery of Linux-based cluster management and mission-critical system administration is essential for ensuring the deterministic performance required by hybrid quantum subroutines. These technical foundations are coupled with deep knowledge of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and virtualization, which allow for the dynamic allocation of classical resources to support QPU-specific control stacks. Such capabilities are vital for reducing the integration friction between diverse hardware vendors and unified software entry points. Beyond immediate uptime, this role facilitates the structural throughput of the research pipeline by automating the provisioning of development environments and ensuring high-availability for data-intensive simulation tasks.
Accelerates the deterministic transition from laboratory-scale experiments to standardized production-grade quantum computing clusters
Mitigates systemic operational risks by implementing high-availability protocols across hybrid classical-quantum hardware environments
Facilitates the seamless integration of QPU control systems into established high-performance computing architectures and workflows
Reduces iteration friction for algorithm researchers through the automated provisioning of scalable and reliable compute nodes
Strengthens the long-term reliability of deep-tech R\&D pipelines by securing foundational IT infrastructure and data integrity
Harmonizes the requirements of legacy enterprise IT with the specialized demands of emerging quantum hardware modalities
Optimizes the lifecycle of mission-critical compute resources through the application of rigorous systems administration best practices
Supports the scaling of institutional research by identifying and resolving infrastructure bottlenecks in high-dimensional data processing
Shortens the time-to-deployment for hybrid applications by ensuring architectural alignment with evolving hardware roadmaps
Improves the accessibility of quantum resources for cross-functional teams through the development of interoperable middleware layers
Protects significant capital investments in supercomputing hardware by providing expert validation of infrastructure compatibility
Enables the strategic orchestration of distributed compute workloads across sovereign and private cloud-based research networks
Industry Tags: High Performance Computing, Systems Integration, Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Quantum Middleware, Linux Cluster Management, Hybrid Cloud Computing, Data Center Operations, Infrastructure as Code
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