Harvard Medical SchoolRemote
Scientific Platform Engineer
United States of America
Full Time
1 week ago
No H1B
Key skills
Platform engineeringSystems engineeringDevOpsBuild/release engineeringResearch computing infrastructureCI/CD systemsInfrastructure-as-Code toolsLinux internalsBash scriptingCross-platform debuggingPython programmingHPC environmentsContainerizationArtifact signingSupply-chain toolingRegulated/compliance-sensitive environmentsEngineering disciplineCuriosityJavaScriptPythonRubyBashTerraformDockerGitHub ActionsGitLab CIAnsibleGitHubGitLabVersion ControlCI/CDLeadership
About this role
Harvard Medical School is dedicated to improving health and well-being through excellence in teaching, discovery, and leadership. They are seeking a Scientific Platform Engineer to modernize and enhance a scientific software platform used in structural biology and related fields, focusing on engineering and platform development rather than routine support.
Responsibilities:
- Design and implement CI pipelines for scientific software across macOS and Linux
- Develop regression and smoke test harnesses for packaged software
- Catch failures before distribution rather than after client installation
- Support fast-moving development branches (e.g., nightly builds) safely
- Help define and enforce a canonical build contract
- Improve dependency tracking and version control
- Enable deterministic rebuilds across environments
- Contribute to artifact integrity and metadata tracking (e.g., SBOM readiness)
- Add tests and versioning discipline to SBGrid’s runtime wrapper system (“capsules”)
- Introduce feature flags and safer rollout mechanisms
- Improve logging, observability, and error classification
- Develop dashboards and structured signals around build failures and common error states
- Reduce reliance on tribal knowledge by encoding workflows into systems
Requirements:
- Minimum of five years' post-secondary education or relevant work experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field
- Minimum of 5 years of relevant experience in platform engineering, systems engineering, DevOps, build/release engineering, research computing infrastructure, or a closely related area
- Two or more years of professional software development experience
- Experience with CI/CD systems (e.g., GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, similar)
- Experience with an Infrastructure-as-Code tool (e.g. Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform, etc)
- Comfortable with Linux internals and scripting in Bash
- Experience debugging cross-platform build or runtime issues
- Solid programming skills in at least one interpreted language (Python preferred, Javascript, Ruby, etc)
- Comfort working in a remote, documentation-driven environment
- Experience with HPC environments or research computing
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Singularity/Apptainer, similar)
- Experience with artifact signing or supply-chain tooling
- Experience working in regulated or compliance-sensitive environments
- Interest in scientific research software ecosystems
- Strong engineering discipline and curiosity matter