HPC Operations Engineer

Tower Research Capital is a leading quantitative trading firm founded in 1998. Tower has built its business on a high-performance platform and independent trading teams. We have a 25+ year track record of innovation and a reputation for discovering unique market opportunities. Tower is home to some of the world’s best systematic trading and engineering talent. We empower portfolio managers to build their teams and strategies independently while providing the economies of scale that come from a large, global organization. Engineers thrive at Tower while developing electronic trading infrastructure at a world class level. Our engineers solve challenging problems in the realms of low-latency programming, FPGA technology, hardware acceleration and machine learning. Our ongoing investment in top engineering talent and technology ensures our platform remains unmatched in terms of functionality, scalability and performance. At Tower, every employee plays a role in our success. Our Business Support teams are essential to building and maintaining the platform that powers everything we do — combining market access, data, compute, and research infrastructure with risk management, compliance, and a full suite of business services. Our Business Support teams enable our trading and engineering teams to perform at their best. At Tower, employees will find a stimulating, results-oriented environment where highly intelligent and motivated colleagues inspire each other to reach their greatest potential. Summary: This is an operations role, not a platform engineering one. It is about the daily health of the Research compute fleet: you will be the first line of support for HPC users and the primary owner of day-to-day operations across scheduling, compute, storage, and access. The work is transactional by nature, with tickets, triage, provisioning, and maintenance done well, every day. The fleet has grown fast, with close to a thousand machines added recently, and this role exists so that infrastructure gets dedicated, high-standard operational care. You will keep an eye on system health, queues, node status, and service availability; work job failures, scheduler errors, and resource constraints as they come in; and drive every issue to resolution or a clean, well-documented escalation. You will sit inside the HPC team, next to the engineers who build and run the platform. That proximity matters: your diagnostics feed their root-cause work, your runbooks capture what the team learns, and the recurring issues you surface become candidates for automation and permanent fixes. For someone who wants to grow into HPC engineering, this is a strong place to start. Responsibilities: • Provide first-line support for HPC users across scheduling, compute, storage, and access issues. • Troubleshoot job failures, scheduler errors, and resource constraints, driving each issue to resolution or a clean handoff. • Triage infrastructure incidents: gather diagnostics, apply known fixes, and escalate to subject-matter experts when a problem extends beyond defined ownership. • Monitor fleet health (queues, node status, storage, and service availability) and act on what you see before users have to report it. • Carry out established operational procedures for maintenance, patching, and configuration updates across the Research fleet. • Provision new machines into the Research fleet (OS installation, configuration, validation, and handoff into service), and handle reinstalls and decommissions as routine work. • Write and maintain runbooks, knowledge-base articles, and user guides so the next occurrence of a problem is faster to fix than the first. • Spot recurring issues and propose practical refinements, such as better workflows or automation candidates the HPC team can pick up, so the same ticket stops coming back. Qualifications: • A bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. • 2+ years supporting Linux-based production environments. • Solid Linux administration fundamentals (RHEL-family and/or Ubuntu). • Methodical troubleshooting: you work a problem step by step, know what you have ruled out, and recognize when it is time to escalate. • Experience working directly with users in a technical support or operations role. • Strong written communication: clear tickets, clear runbooks, clear handoffs. • The discipline to follow established processes with genuine attention to detail. Nice to Have: • Enough Bash or Python to script away routine operational tasks. • Working knowledge of batch schedulers such as Slurm, HTCondor, or LSF. • A good grasp of the plumbing behind networked computing: NFS, automounter, LDAP. • Hands-on experience provisioning Linux machines: network boot (PXE), unattended installs (kickstart), or configuration management such as Ansible. • Prior exposure to HPC or other large-scale compute environments. • Familiarity with monitoring and observability stacks such as Prometheus and Grafana. Anticipated annual base salary range $175,000-$225,000, plus eligible for discretionary bonus. Tower’s headquarters are in the historic Equitable Building, right in the heart of NYC’s Financial District and our impact is global, with over a dozen offices around the world. At Tower, we believe work should be both challenging and enjoyable. That is why we foster a culture where smart, driven people thrive – without the egos. Our open concept workplace, casual dress code, and well-stocked kitchens reflect the value we place on a friendly, collaborative environment where everyone is respected, and great ideas win. Our benefits include: • Generous paid time off policies • Savings plans and other financial wellness tools available in each region • Hybrid working opportunities • Free breakfast, lunch, and snacks daily • In-office wellness experiences and reimbursement for select wellness expenses (e.g., gym, personal training a