Job Description Summary
The Senior Operations Manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations, optimization, and user enablement of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment supporting Novartis Biomedical Research. The role ensures that scientific workloads run reliably, securely, and efficiently across on-premise HPC, scientific software stacks, SBGrid, specialized on-premise applications, the DGX AI/ML compute environment, and AWS-based compute environments, with a major focus on the scientific software ecosystem — the HPC toolbox, SBGrid, and specialized on-premise applications — alongside AI/ML and cloud compute enablement. The role works in close partnership with Novartis IT, the BR Compute Management Team, and third-party providers to deliver a stable, performant, and continuously evolving compute platform.
Location: Hyderabad, India
#LI-Hybrid
Job Description
Key Responsibilities
- Provide user support, incident management, and issue escalation, coordinating with Novartis IT teams and third-party providers for timely resolution.
- Manage user community communications — proactive notifications on platform issues, maintenance, and scheduled downtimes.
- Own user training, onboarding, and offboarding coordination.
- Perform system monitoring, storage hygiene, and vulnerability management, coordinating remediation with relevant teams.
- Test key functionalities after upgrades and patches, in collaboration with Novartis IT or third-party providers.
- Collaborate with the BR Compute Management Team for direction, alignment, and prioritization of activities.
- Deliver regular usage reports and status updates to the BR Compute Management Team.
- Maintain and extend user documentation, training materials, internal SOPs, and best-practice guidance.
Platform-Specific Responsibilities (Across HPC, Scientific Software & AI/ML Compute)
- Support the day-to-day operations of the on-premise HPC platform — contributing to scheduler policies, capacity planning, upgrades, and patching validation, and acting as an escalation point for cluster, interconnect, file system, and scheduler-related matters in coordination with infrastructure and vendor teams.
- Build and maintain the HPC software toolbox using an agreed EasyBuild toolchain, managing compilers, MPI libraries, environment modules, containers, and the lifecycle of scientific applications across research domains.
- Support application onboarding, benchmarking, and performance tuning in collaboration with research and AI/ML teams.
- Administer the SBGrid software suite — coordinating updates, licensing, and issue resolution with the SBGrid consortium, and supporting SBGrid-based workflows within HPC pipelines.
- Operate specialized on-premise scientific platforms such as the Schrödinger Platform, CryoSPARC Platform, and NICE DCV remote visualization — covering licensing, upgrades, HPC/GPU/storage integration, user enablement, and vendor coordination.
- Administer and operate the NVIDIA DGX environment supporting BR AI/ML workloads — managing the DGX scheduler, GPU quotas, drivers, CUDA stacks, containers, and AI/ML frameworks.
- Coordinate DGX upgrades, firmware/BIOS updates, and patching with Novartis teams and NVIDIA/third-party providers; monitor DGX-attached storage and engage with users on data hygiene.
- Deliver regular HPC and DGX usage, job/GPU efficiency, and platform status reports to the BR Compute Management Team.
Required Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Computational Sciences, or a related discipline.
- 7+ years of hands-on experience administering enterprise or research HPC environments.
- Strong Linux system administration skills.
- Deep expertise with at least one HPC job scheduler.
- Experience with parallel file systems.
- Proficiency with MPI, compilers, environment modules, and scientific software stacks.
- Experience with container technologies.
- Exposure to GPU/DGX environments and AI/ML frameworks.
- Scripting/automation skills (Bash, Python).
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting life sciences workloads — genomics, structural biology (SBGrid, Cryo-EM, crystallography), cheminformatics, AI/ML in drug discovery.
- Familiarity with specialized scientific platforms (Schrödinger, CryoSPARC, NICE DCV).
- Familiarity with monitoring/observability tools.
- Experience with identity management (LDAP/AD, SSO) in multi-tenant HPC setups.
- Prior experience in a large enterprise research or regulated (GxP) environment.
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion / EEO paragraph
Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities we serve.
Accessibility and accommodation
Novartis is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the recruitment process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message
Skills Desired
Algorithms, Computer Programming, Computer Science, Computer Vision, Data Science, People Management, Waterfall Model
