Senior Consultant - HPC Testing Engineer

Job Title: Senior Consultant - HPC Testing Engineer

Career level: D3

Introduction to role

R&D IT's Research Data & Analytics Team includes skilled data and AI experts dedicated to crafting innovative services and products. Our mission is to transform the way R&D discovers and develops medicine through data, analytics, and AI. We partner with scientific teams to deliver groundbreaking capabilities, products, and platforms that enable scientists to accelerate the development of safe and effective medicines for patients.

Accountabilities

• Design, develop, and deploy automated test scripts for HPC infrastructure and research applications.

• Implement CI/CD pipelines for automated testing of HPC workloads and system configurations.

• Continuously monitor HPC system performance and resource utilization to detect anomalies and inefficiencies.

• Develop proactive test cases to assess system reliability and stability.

• Create, manage, and maintain test datasets and controlled environments for automated and manual testing.

• Ensure test environments accurately reflect production HPC configurations.

• Analyze test results, detect issues, and perform in-depth root cause analysis.

• Implement performance benchmarks using industry-standard tools (e.g., HPL, IO500, STREAM, MLPerf).

• Analyze benchmark results to optimize HPC job scheduling, networking, and I/O performance.

• Manage regression test environments and ensure system integrity across updates and configuration changes.

• Develop comprehensive test plans, including functional, performance, stress, and security testing.

• Generate detailed system test reports with actionable insights.

• Work closely with researchers, engineers, and domain experts to align HPC system functionality with project needs.

• Continuously refine and optimize test automation frameworks and system health checks.

• Integrate new testing methodologies, tools, and best practices to improve test coverage and efficiency.

• Perform security validation tests to ensure alignment with standard methodologies and institutional policies.

• Evaluate HPC system vulnerabilities and implement automated security scanning.

• Maintain detailed documentation of test cases, procedures, and results.

• Contribute to internal knowledge-sharing initiatives and deliver training sessions on HPC testing methodologies.

Essential Skills/Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a quantitative or engineering field (Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Engineering, etc.), or equivalent work experience.

• Hands-on experience with automated testing in large-scale computing environments such as HPC, HTC, or BC, preferably in Life Sciences (e.g., Pharmaceutical Industry, BioTech).

• Experience with system-level testing, including hardware and software validation.

• Experience with building systems such as Make, CMake or Makefile

• Test driven development, and testing frameworks such as pytest, testinfra, reframe HPC

• Experience with container technologies and schedulers, such as Docker, Singularity/Apptainer, Slurm, LSF and Kubernetes.

• Expertise in application profiling and performance tuning for optimizing HPC workloads.

• Familiarity with Python virtual environments, such as Conda, Pip, or Poetry.

• Strong scripting skills using Bash and Python for automation and test development.

• Deep understanding of Linux system administration, including the TCP/IP stack, storage subsystems, and kernel-level optimizations.

• Proficiency with Linux/Unix environments, including standard tools and scripting languages (Python, Bash, Perl, etc.).

• Experience running performance benchmarks using tools like HPL, IO500, STREAM, MLPerf, or equivalent.

• Effective interpersonal and teamwork skills, with the ability to collaborate across engineering, research, and operations teams.

• Familiarity with formal testing processes, including test case design, execution, and validation.

• Experience with issue tracking systems (e.g., JIRA) and generating detailed test reports.

Desirable Skills/Experience

• Knowledge of / experience with HPC applications and algorithms

• Experience with computer architecture (compute, memory, storage)

• Experience with data analytics and reporting

• Knowledge of multi-threading / parallel programming libraries (MPI, pthreads, OpenMP, etc.)

• Knowledge of GPU-related software/libraries (CUDA, OpenCL, etc.)

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That's why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we're not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our unique and ambitious world.

AstraZeneca is a place where your work has a direct impact on patients' lives. We empower our business to perform at its peak by combining cutting-edge science with leading digital technology platforms. Join us at a crucial stage of our journey in becoming a digital and data-led enterprise. Here you can innovate freely while being supported by a network of entrepreneurial self-starters who contribute to something far bigger.

Ready to make a difference? Apply now!

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.