HPC Systems Software Engineer – OpenCHAMI or Zürich

The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) develops and operates a high-performance computing and data research infrastructure that supports world‑class science in Switzerland. Its user laboratory is available to domestic and international researchers in academia, industry, and the business sector. The centre is operated by ETH Zurich and has offices at its data centre in Lugano and in Zurich.

Project Overview:

OpenCHAMI stands for Open Composable Heterogeneous Adaptable Management Infrastructure
. It is an open source project that provides modern system management and provisioning tools for High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters and supercomputers. The project with limited project financing and therefore limited contract duration aims to bring cloud‑like deployment, automation, and security capabilities to HPC environments.

This project with work location either Lugano or Zürich focuses on the development and advancement of OpenCHAMI for CSCS’s next‑generation supercomputing infrastructure. The work will contribute to building an open, scalable, and modern approach to cluster management for large‑scale High Performance Computing (HPC) systems.
The main objective is to design, develop, integrate, and deploy OpenCHAMI capabilities tailored to the operational requirements of CSCS supercomputers.
The project will address the challenges of managing increasingly complex HPC and AI systems and contribute to the evolution of next‑generation open‑source cluster management technologies.

What We Value:

We value technical excellence, curiosity, initiative, and the ability to learn and grow over a perfect checklist of skills. Working on next‑generation HPC infrastructure requires a willingness to explore new technologies, tackle complex problems, and continuously develop new expertise.
If you are motivated to make a meaningful impact in this area but do not meet every requirement, we strongly encourage you to apply.

The Opportunity:

We offer an initially two‑year contract providing the opportunity to work at the forefront of HPC and AI infrastructure at CSCS, contributing directly to the development of technologies that will support future supercomputing systems.
You will have the opportunity to contribute to OpenCHAMI and related open‑source initiatives, collaborating with the broader HPC community and contributing to high‑impact programs at both the national and international levels, including HPSF, OpenCHAMI, and related initiatives.

This is an opportunity to help shape how future CSCS supercomputers are managed, monitored, and operated, while contributing to open‑source technologies with an impact well beyond a single system or institution.

• Develop and extend OpenCHAMI to meet the infrastructure management and operational requirements of CSCS’s current and next‑generation supercomputing systems.
• Contribute to the OpenCHAMI open‑source ecosystem, including the development, integration, and evolution of related cluster management services and components.
• Develop automation and management workflows to improve system provisioning, configuration, monitoring, maintenance, and operational efficiency at scale.
• Collaborate closely with HPC operations teams to understand operational requirements and challenges, and translate them into robust, scalable, and maintainable OpenCHAMI‑based solutions.
• Contribute to the architecture and evolution of the OpenCHAMI platform, ensuring that solutions are scalable, reliable, maintainable, and aligned with the needs of large‑scale HPC and AI systems.
• Participate actively in open‑source development workflows, including software design, implementation, testing, code reviews, issue tracking, and technical discussions within the OpenCHAMI…