HPC Hardware Engineer, Firmware Management

THE COMPANY

NorthMark Compute & Cloud (NMC²) is backed by dedicated leadership and investment, with a clear mission as it operates at the bleeding edge of technology. Its goal is to scale and enhance the high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure that supports its clients' research, production, and delivery, enabling breakthroughs that shape the industries of tomorrow. Its engineers build critical infrastructure to eliminate friction in scientific research, simulations, analysis, and decision-making, accelerating discovery and driving faster innovation.

THE POSITION

NMC²'s Hardware Engineering team owns the firmware lifecycle across a large, heterogeneous fleet of HPC and AI infrastructure — from CPU and GPU servers to rack-scale systems built on platforms such as NVIDIA A100/H200, HPE GB200, and Dell GB300 NVL72, along with the BlueField DPUs and ConnectX adapters that tie it all together. As an HPC Hardware Engineer focused on Firmware Management, you will be the engineer other teams rely on to keep firmware current, compatible, and safe to deploy across every hardware variant in the fleet.

You will own the full firmware lifecycle end to end: tracking vendor releases and advisories, qualifying new versions for compatibility and performance, catching regressions before they reach production, and maintaining approved baselines fleet-wide. Much of your impact will come from engineering vendor-neutral automation — combining Redfish, IPMI, and vendor-specific tooling like iLO, iDRAC, OneView, and NVIDIA utilities into reusable, declarative workflows that make firmware packaging, provisioning, and rack-aware deployment reliable at scale.

This role works closely with Data Center Operations, Networking, Software Engineering, and external hardware and firmware vendors to resolve regressions, validate fixes, and keep the fleet healthy. Great performance in this role looks like a fleet with no firmware drift, clean and auditable release history, and automation mature enough that hardware onboarding and firmware upgrades happen safely with minimal manual intervention.

This is a hybrid role based out of NMC²'s Dallas, TX office (Victory Commons).

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the firmware lifecycle end to end — monitoring vendor releases and security advisories, assessing applicability, qualifying compatibility and performance, and detecting regressions across the fleet.

• Maintain approved firmware baselines across heterogeneous hardware variants, including NVIDIA A100/H200 GPU servers, HPE GB200 and Dell GB300 NVL72 rack-scale systems, BlueField DPUs, and ConnectX adapters.

• Engineer vendor-neutral provisioning and firmware automation using reusable workflows and declarative configuration, combining open-source tooling and Redfish/IPMI with vendor-specific interfaces such as iLO, iDRAC, OneView, and NVIDIA utilities.

• Build and maintain automation in Python, Ansible, Jenkins, Git, and Temporal, including hardware inventory APIs, rack-aware upgrade orchestration, automated testing, controlled concurrency, retries, and failure recovery.

• Own firmware packaging and safe fleet deployment — including custom HPE SPPs, BlueField BFB bundles, versioned release manifests, and controlled artifact promotion — backed by representative lab testing, canaries, phased rollouts, health checks, and recovery procedures.

• Automate end-to-end hardware onboarding and provisioning across servers, racks, and data centers, covering inventory validation, management configuration, and firmware readiness, leveraging OpenStack/Ironic, Terraform, and cloud-init where applicable.

• Partner closely with vendors and data center teams to investigate firmware regressions and complex hardware faults, escalate defects, validate fixes, and establish safe repair procedures.

• Build secure, observable, and supportable services using secrets management and least-privilege access patterns, hardware-health telemetry, actionable alerting, and firmware drift detection.

• Identify recurring risks and manual toil across the fleet, propose scalable automation solutions, and drive them through validation into production adoption rather than maintaining a static set of scripts.

• Document operational procedures and firmware standards clearly enough that other engineers and on-call responders can safely operate against the systems you build.

REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

• Strong DevOps experience managing heterogeneous HPC hardware at scale, spanning CPU/GPU servers and rack-scale systems.

• Hands-on experience with Redfish, IPMI, and vendor management interfaces such as iLO, iDRAC, OneView, or equivalent NVIDIA utilities.

• Proficiency in Python and experience with Linux systems administration, Ansible, Jenkins, and Git in a production automation context.

• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Temporal, including designing for controlled concurrency, retries, and failure recovery.

• Familiarity with firmware packaging and release processes (e.g., HPE Service Pack for ProLiant, NVIDIA BlueField BFB bundles) and safe rollout practices such as canaries and phased deployment.

• OpenStack/Ironic experience preferred; Terraform and cloud-init experience is a plus.

• Demonstrated ability to work directly with hardware and firmware vendors to diagnose regressions, escalate defects, and validate fixes.

• Strong ownership mindset — comfortable identifying inefficiencies and driving automation solutions from proposal through production adoption.

• Excellent cross-functional communication skills, with the ability to coordinate effectively with data center operations, software engineering, and external vendor teams.

It is impossible to list every requirement for, or responsibility of, any position.  Similarly, we cannot identify all the skills a position may require since job responsibilities and the Company’s needs may change over time.  Therefore, the above job description is not comprehensive or exhaustive.  The Company reserves the right to adjust, add to or eliminate any aspect of the above description.  The Company also retains the right to require all employees to undertake additional or different job responsibilities when necessary to meet business needs.

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or at any time in the future.

Benefits & Perks:

• Company-Paid Lunch Stipend: Lunch is provided via GrubHub

• Company-Paid Benefits: 100% Employer-Paid Medical in our High Deductible Health Plan, Dental and Vision benefits for employees and their families, 16 weeks of Paid Parental Leave, Employee Assistance Program, Life insurance, Short-Term Disability and Long-Term Disability

• 401(k): Company will match 100% of your contributions up to 6%

• Optional Employee-Paid Benefits: Medical insurance in our PPO plan and a variety of other benefits such as Health Savings Accounts (with Company Contribution!), Flexible Spending Accounts, Supplemental Life Insurance, Wellhub and more.

• Time Off:  25 days of Paid Time Off plus 12 company holidays

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

NORTHMARK STRATEGIES LLC IS AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. THE COMPANY'S POLICY IS NOT TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST ANY APPLICANT OR EMPLOYEE BASED ON RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, AGE, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY OR EXPRESSION, MARITAL STATUS, MENTAL OR PHYSICAL DISABILITY, AND GENETIC INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER BASIS PROTECTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. THE FIRM ALSO PROHIBITS HARASSMENT OF APPLICANTS OR EMPLOYEES BASED ON ANY OF THESE PROTECTED CATEGORIES.