HPC Architect - Classified Compute

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An active TS, Q, or TS/SCI clearance is required for consideration.

The Field Intelligence Operations Division in the National Security Sciences Directorate at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is seeking qualified applicants for an experienced High Performance Computing (HPC) Architect to design, integrate, and evolve advanced computing capabilities supporting classified national security missions.

This position serves as a senior technical authority for HPC architecture and will help translate mission and scientific computing requirements into secure, scalable, resilient, and high-performing computing environments. The HPC Architect will work across compute, storage, networking, cybersecurity, facilities, applications, and data center infrastructure to develop integrated solutions capable of supporting demanding computational workloads in classified environments.

The successful candidate will combine deep HPC technical expertise with systems‑level architectural thinking. This role is particularly suited for an individual who can evaluate complex requirements, identify technical dependencies and tradeoffs, establish architectural direction, and guide engineering teams from concept through deployment and sustainment.

• Develop end‑to‑end architectures for classified HPC and advanced computing environments, including compute, storage, high‑speed networking, management infrastructure, software, and supporting services.
• Translate scientific, engineering, AI/ML, and national security mission requirements into scalable HPC architectures and technical roadmaps.
• Serve as a technical lead for the design and deployment of new HPC systems and associated data center infrastructure.
• Develop architecture diagrams, technical specifications, design packages, bills of material, capacity models, implementation strategies, and technology roadmaps.
• Evaluate CPU, GPU, accelerator, memory, interconnect, storage, and emerging computing technologies against mission requirements.
• Architect high‑performance storage solutions, parallel file systems, data movement capabilities, and storage hierarchies appropriate for large‑scale computational workloads.
• Design and evaluate high‑speed network fabrics and interconnects supporting compute, storage, management, and data‑transfer requirements.
• Establish architectural standards for HPC management networks, provisioning, scheduling, monitoring, logging, configuration management, and administration.
• Evaluate HPC workload characteristics and develop capacity, scalability, performance, and lifecycle projections.
• Conduct architectural trade studies and make recommendations based on performance, security, resiliency, lifecycle, cost, schedule, and mission impact.
• Work with facilities and data center personnel to identify rack space, power, cooling, cabling, floor loading, redundancy, and environmental requirements associated with HPC deployments.
• Develop technical requirements for procurements and participate in vendor evaluations, technical reviews, acceptance testing, and system commissioning.
• Provide architectural oversight during installation, integration, testing, accreditation, transition to operations, and lifecycle refresh activities.
• Partner with cybersecurity and Information Assurance personnel to incorporate security requirements into system architecture from initial design rather than after deployment.
• Support Risk Management Framework (RMF), Authority to Operate (ATO), configuration management, vulnerability management, and security‑control implementation activities.
• Ensure architectural solutions appropriately address segmentation, least privilege, privileged access, encryption, logging,…