Emerging Storage Architect

The Company

NorthMark Compute & Cloud (NMC²) is backed by dedicated leadership and investment, with a clear mission as it operates at the bleeding edge of technology. Its goal is to scale and enhance the high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure that supports its clients’ research, production, and delivery, enabling breakthroughs that shape the industries of tomorrow. Its engineers build critical infrastructure to eliminate friction in scientific research, simulations, analysis, and decision-making, accelerating discovery and driving faster innovation.
 

The Position

The HPC Storage Engineering team manages our high-performance scalable storage platform in excess of 200 petabytes. We are responsible for the design, deployment, and operation of this storage platform, which supports the research workloads of our customers and is therefore a core component of our infrastructure.

As Emerging Storage Architect, you will sit at the intersection of research and infrastructure — scanning the horizon for next-generation storage technologies and architectures, building relationships with leading vendors, and translating those insights into practical solutions that push the performance of our HPC platform forward. You will work directly with customers to understand their workloads and requirements, collaborate with network and compute architects to deliver complete HPC solutions, and help internal teams bring chosen architectures to life at scale.
 

Responsibilities:

• Explore and evaluate emerging storage architectures and technologies from across the industry, assessing their potential to improve key HPC metrics including Model FLOPS Utilization and Performance per Watt
• Develop and maintain strong technical partnerships with leading storage vendors, incorporating their forward roadmaps into our HPC platform strategy and architecture planning
• Recommend and justify hardware and software solutions aligned with performance, efficiency, and scalability objectives
• Work directly with customers to understand their current and future HPC workloads and requirements, and translate these into performance benchmarks and architecture models
• Evaluate incoming hardware and software in our own lab environment, running benchmarks and test jobs to verify system performance before production adoption
• Support bottleneck identification and performance evaluation for new storage hardware, recommending optimizations such as I/O acceleration techniques and caching strategies
• Collaborate with network and compute architects to integrate individual vendor components into cohesive, end-to-end HPC solutions
• Provide technical guidance and hands-on support to internal teams responsible for deploying chosen architectures at scale
• Influence vendor roadmaps through structured feedback, joint initiatives, and technology evaluations; maintain a continuous pulse on the HPC storage landscape from established vendors through to emerging startups
   

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field; or equivalent demonstrable experience in HPC solution architecture or systems engineering
• Deep expertise in storage architectures with hands-on experience deploying and operating high-performance storage systems (VAST, Lustre, Spectrum Scale, or equivalent) within HPC cluster environments
• Expertise in defining data ingest, staging, processing, and archiving strategies for HPC workflows, particularly at petabyte scale
• Strong understanding of storage benchmarking and performance modeling using tools such as IOR, mdtest, and FIO
• Hands-on lab experience running benchmarks and test jobs on unproven hardware in a pre-production environment
• Experience designing storage architectures with reliability, resiliency, and security as core principles across storage clusters
• Demonstrated success working directly with clients to capture technical requirements and deliver tailored, scalable system designs across AI/ML, scientific computing, CFD, and genomics workloads
• Familiarity with emerging storage technologies including NVMe over Fabrics, CXL, and persistent memory (desirable)

It is impossible to list every requirement for, or responsibility of, any position.  Similarly, we cannot identify all the skills a position may require since job responsibilities and the Company’s needs may change over time.  Therefore, the above job description is not comprehensive or exhaustive.  The Company reserves the right to adjust, add to or eliminate any aspect of the above description.  The Company also retains the right to require all employees to undertake additional or different job responsibilities when necessary to meet business needs.

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or at any time in the future.

Benefits & Perks:

• Company-Paid Lunch Stipend: Lunch is provided via GrubHub

• Company-Paid Benefits: 100% Employer-Paid Medical in our High Deductible Health Plan, Dental and Vision benefits for employees and their families, 16 weeks of Paid Parental Leave, Employee Assistance Program, Life insurance, Short-Term Disability and Long-Term Disability

• 401(k): Company will match 100% of your contributions up to 6%

• Optional Employee-Paid Benefits: Medical insurance in our PPO plan and a variety of other benefits such as Health Savings Accounts (with Company Contribution!), Flexible Spending Accounts, Supplemental Life Insurance, Wellhub and more.

• Time Off:  25 days of Paid Time Off plus 12 company holidays

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

NORTHMARK STRATEGIES LLC IS AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. THE COMPANY'S POLICY IS NOT TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST ANY APPLICANT OR EMPLOYEE BASED ON RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, AGE, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY OR EXPRESSION, MARITAL STATUS, MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DISABILITY, AND GENETIC INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER BASIS PROTECTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. THE FIRM ALSO PROHIBITS HARASSMENT OF APPLICANTS OR EMPLOYEES BASED ON ANY OF THESE PROTECTED CATEGORIES.