Architect / Architectural Designer (Permanent) in Bristol

Sector: Defence, Security & CNI

Reference: BH-21018

Summary: Shape the long-term direction of high-performance computing rather than simply supporting established infrastructure. You will have genuine architectural ownership across complex HPC environments while continuing to develop your technical expertise within the Defence sector.

Where you will be based: The role is hybrid-working in Bristol, 2 to 3 days per week onsite. Other working locations are on offer. This is a permanent, full-time role.

Your role:

• Define and own the long-term HPC architecture roadmap, ensuring the environment develops in line with changing engineering and organisational requirements.
• Architect scalable, high-throughput HPC environments covering compute nodes, storage platforms, high-speed interconnects and supporting infrastructure.
• Evaluate and select technologies across compute, storage, networking and cloud-based HPC to support future capability.
• Design large-scale HPC clusters incorporating CPU, GPU and accelerator-based systems for demanding engineering workloads.
• Develop high-performance networking architectures using technologies such as InfiniBand, RDMA and high-speed Ethernet.
• Define storage architecture across parallel file systems, object storage and tiered storage solutions.
• Establish technical standards, reference architectures and engineering best practices for HPC environments.
• Lead performance benchmarking, capacity planning and workload modelling to ensure infrastructure delivers the required throughput, latency and scalability.
• Identify architectural bottlenecks and define technical improvements to optimise overall HPC performance.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural oversight to HPC engineering and operations teams.
• Work closely with engineers, infrastructure specialists, HPC vendors and wider stakeholders to ensure services continue to meet evolving requirements.
• Collaborate with multinational teams to support wider capability development across the organisation.

Skills and background:

• Strong Linux expertise combined with substantial experience designing or architecting High Performance Computing environments.
• Experience developing HPC architecture strategies, technology roadmaps, standards or reference architectures.
• Strong understanding of large-scale HPC clusters including CPU, GPU and accelerator-based compute.
• Knowledge of high-performance networking technologies such as InfiniBand, RDMA and high-speed Ethernet.
• Experience designing storage solutions using technologies such as parallel file systems, object storage and tiered storage.
• Understanding of performance engineering including benchmarking, capacity planning, workload modelling and architectural bottleneck analysis.
• Knowledge of HPC workload scheduling and orchestration, particularly SLURM and Kubernetes-based environments.
• Familiarity with HPC software stacks including MPI, CUDA, compilers, libraries and container technologies.
• Understanding of workload reproducibility, portability and performance considerations within HPC environments.
• Ability to assess new compute, storage, networking and cloud HPC technologies and translate technical options into longer-term architecture decisions.
• Experience providing technical leadership or architectural guidance to engineering and infrastructure teams.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to collaborate effectively with engineers, technical specialists, vendors and geographically distributed teams.

Essential requirements:

• British National with the ability to obtain and maintain Developed Vetting (DV) clearance.
• Strong HPC architecture experience across compute, storage and networking infrastructure.
• Technical knowledge of large-scale CPU, GPU or accelerator-based environments.
• Experience defining architecture strategy, standards or technical roadmaps.

Salary and rewards: A base salary up to 75,000 is on offer. This comes with a number of added benefits, including:

• Company bonus of 20%+
• Combined employer and employee pension contributions of up to 14%
• Enhanced parental leave, including up to 26 weeks for maternity, adoption and shared parental leave.

Due to the highly confidential nature of work undertaken for this role, applicants MUST be British Citizens and eligible to obtain Developed Vetting (DV) level clearance.

Electus Recruitment Solutions provides specialist engineering and technical recruitment solutions to high-technology industries. Thank you for your interest. If you do not hear from us within seven working days, please presume your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. You may resubmit your CV or details in the future, and we shall assess your suitability then.