Staff Engineer, IT Infrastructure

Staff Engineer, IT Infrastructure

About the Role

PacBio is looking for a Staff Engineer, IT Infrastructure to help design, operate, secure, and evolve the infrastructure supporting our research, engineering, and enterprise environments.

This is a senior individual contributor role for an experienced infrastructure engineer who enjoys remaining hands-on while also thinking about the bigger picture. You will work across Enterprise Linux, HPC and scientific computing, cloud infrastructure, networking, security, storage, observability, and automation.

As part of a relatively small infrastructure team, you will have broad technical ownership and the opportunity to directly influence architecture, engineering standards, modernization strategy, security practices, and operational processes.

We don't expect one person to be an expert in every technology in our environment. We do expect strong infrastructure fundamentals, deep troubleshooting skills, technical curiosity, and a demonstrated ability to take ownership of unfamiliar technologies.

What You'll Do

Infrastructure & HPC

• Design, administer, and support Enterprise Linux environments across physical, virtual, cloud, and HPC infrastructure.
• Manage system provisioning, configuration, patching, lifecycle, security hardening, capacity, performance, and automation.
• Administer and evolve HPC and research-computing environments supporting scientific and engineering workloads.
• Support enterprise workload scheduling, CPU/GPU compute, high-performance networking, and large-scale storage integration.
• Partner with researchers and engineers to understand workload requirements, troubleshoot complex issues, and improve compute performance and user experience.

Cloud, Networking & Security

• Design, operate, and improve infrastructure across on-premises and public-cloud environments.
• Support cloud compute, networking, storage, identity/access management, security, monitoring, and related services.
• Troubleshoot infrastructure networking across on-premises, cloud, and HPC environments, including routing, switching, DNS, firewalls, VPNs, segmentation, load balancing, and hybrid connectivity.
• Apply Zero Trust and secure-by-design principles across infrastructure architecture and operations.
• Incorporate security into infrastructure operations, including identity and access management, vulnerability management, endpoint protection, security telemetry, system hardening, and incident response.
• Help establish practical infrastructure security standards, controls, monitoring, and remediation processes.

Storage & Data Infrastructure

• Support Linux and HPC integration with enterprise storage and large-scale file-storage environments.
• Troubleshoot storage performance, connectivity, capacity, availability, and data-access issues across the infrastructure stack.
• Participate in storage capacity planning, architecture, lifecycle, and workload-placement decisions.
• Work with internal specialists and external partners on complex storage issues and infrastructure improvements.

Automation, Observability & Operational Excellence

• Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, maintenance, validation, and remediation using scripting, APIs, configuration management, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Improve infrastructure observability through metrics, logging, telemetry, dashboards, and actionable alerting.
• Apply CI/CD and declarative infrastructure-management practices where appropriate.
• Explore opportunities to use AI-assisted automation for troubleshooting, telemetry analysis, security operations, documentation, and operational workflows.
• Reduce technical debt and single-person dependencies through automation, documentation, cross-training, and shared technical ownership.

Technical Leadership

• Lead complex infrastructure initiatives from requirements and architecture through implementation and operational handoff.
• Establish engineering standards and reusable infrastructure patterns.
• Influence technical direction and architecture across teams without requiring direct authority.
• Mentor engineers and share technical knowledge while remaining hands-on.
• Balance immediate operational needs with longer-term modernization, reliability, security, and architecture goals.

Required Qualifications

• Significant experience designing, administering, and supporting production infrastructure at enterprise scale.
• Deep hands-on Enterprise Linux administration and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience supporting HPC, scientific computing, large-scale compute, or similarly complex distributed-compute environments.
• Strong infrastructure networking fundamentals with the ability to troubleshoot across compute, network, storage, and application boundaries.
• Hands-on experience operating public-cloud infrastructure.
• Strong automation and scripting skills using modern scripting, configuration-management, API, and Infrastructure-as-Code approaches.
• Experience with infrastructure monitoring, observability, incident response, and root-cause analysis.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security fundamentals, including identity/access management, system hardening, vulnerability management, network security, and secure architecture.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives, mentor others, and influence architecture across teams.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in several of the following areas is highly desirable, but we do not expect candidates to have worked with every technology or platform:
• Enterprise HPC workload scheduling and resource management
• GPU compute infrastructure
• High-performance and low-latency networking
• Container orchestration and container platforms
• Hybrid on-premises/public-cloud infrastructure
• Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, CI/CD, and declarative infrastructure practices
• Enterprise NFS and large-scale file, block, or object storage
• Zero Trust / ZTNA, firewalls, VPNs, and network segmentation
• SIEM, EDR/XDR, security telemetry, and vulnerability-management platforms
• SSO, MFA, and identity-security technologies
• Enterprise monitoring, logging, tracing, and observability platforms
• Scientific computing, bioinformatics, genomics, or research infrastructure
• AI-assisted infrastructure operations and automation

Staff-Level Impact

This is not simply an operations role, nor is it an architecture role removed from day-to-day engineering.

We're looking for someone who can troubleshoot a difficult production issue today, understand why the environment allowed it to happen, and help design a better solution for tomorrow.

The right person will be comfortable moving between hands-on engineering and technical leadership: solving complex problems, establishing standards, mentoring others, influencing architecture, challenging assumptions, and helping define where PacBio's infrastructure goes next.

You do not need to already know every technology in our environment. We're more interested in deep infrastructure fundamentals, sound engineering judgment, intellectual curiosity, and a track record of successfully taking ownership of complex systems.

. . .

Candidates must have current authorization to work in the United States without the need for present or future sponsorship.

Non-Field Based Employees are required to be onsite Monday-Thursday (Friday work from home). Depending on the role, some employees may be required to be 100% onsite.

You may be required from time to time to visit and work at PacBio locations and for such times as the Company considers necessary for the proper performance of your duties.

All listed tasks and responsibilities are deemed as essential functions to this position; however, business conditions may require reasonable accommodations for additional tasks and responsibilities.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

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