AI Platform Engineer

Job Description

The Position

The Advanced Scientific Compute (ASC) team is evolving. As we shift our focus toward hosting proprietary models and managing state-of-the-art, on-premise GPU hardware for both AI model training and inference, we are looking for a motivated AI Platform Engineer.

In the modern AI landscape, we are looking for an engineer with a strong technical foundation and good understanding of AI concepts, who can also act as an orchestrator. You will help operate and support the foundational layer of our on-premise AI hosting environments—encompassing GPU/HPC infrastructure, containerization, automation, and observability. You will leverage AI agents to augment your technical skills, accelerating your workflows and allowing you to focus on problem-solving and collaboration with our research community across the US and EU.

What will you do?

• Manage and automate on-premise infrastructure for AI and HPC, focusing on high-performance GPU servers and clusters, while occasionally assisting with cloud-based resources.
• Deploy, manage, and orchestrate AI training and inference workloads, primarily utilizing Slurm, Nvidia Triton and Docker containers.
• Leverage AI and GenAI tooling to accelerate development, build CI/CD pipelines, and automate repetitive infrastructure tasks.
• Assist in performance tuning, capacity tracking, and scaling of compute clusters to ensure reliable and efficient services for researchers.
• Collaborate directly with researchers to understand workflows and translate non-technical needs into robust infrastructure solutions.
• Maintain monitoring, dashboards, logging, and alerting for critical components to support vital AI infrastructure.
• Maintain and evolve the existing ecosystem of HPC modules and scientific applications to ensure reproducible builds and consistent environments.
• Share expertise in leveraging agentic AI tools and champion modern, AI-assisted engineering practices among team members.

Qualifications, Skills & Experience Required

• 3+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience, with at least 1 year of hands-on experience working with AI platforms, GPU environments, or similar modern compute workloads.
• Practical experience in Enterprise Linux administration, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Strong experience with Docker and container runtimes, alongside familiarity with job schedulers like Slurm in an HPC or scientific computing environment.
• Practical experience with GPU servers or clusters, including a solid understanding of NVIDIA drivers, CUDA/cuDNN/NCCL, and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit.
• Solid Python programming skills and strong DevOps fundamentals, particularly utilizing version control (Git).
• Experience with monitoring and troubleshooting distributed systems or compute clusters.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work flexibly to collaborate across EU and US timezones.

Nice to have

• Experience with Kubernetes and operating containerized platforms at scale.
• Background in pharma, biotech, or academic scientific computing environments.
• Full-stack development capabilities (web UIs, REST APIs) to build internal researcher-facing tooling.
• Familiarity with Python packaging and environment management tools (Conda/mamba, pip) alongside the scientific Python stack.

What we offer

• Exciting work in a great team, global projects, international environment.
• Opportunity to learn and grow professionally within the company globally.
• Hybrid working model, flexible role pattern (e.g., even 80% full-time is possible in justified cases). 
• Pension and health insurance contributions. 
• Internal reward system plus referral programme. 
• 5 weeks annual leave, 5 sick days, 15 days of certified sick leave paid above statutory requirements annually, 40 paid hours annually for volunteering activities, 12 weeks of parental contribution. 
• Cafeteria for tax free benefits according to your choice (meal vouchers, sport, culture, health, travel, etc.), Multisport Card. 
• Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank and Foodora discount programmes. 
• Up-to-date laptop and iPhone. 
• Parking in the garage, showers, refreshments, massage chairs, library, music corner. 
• Competitive salary, incentive pay, and many more. 

Ready to take up the challenge? Apply now! 
Know anybody who might be interested? Refer this job!

Required Skills:

Availability Management, Availability Management, Biodesign, Capacity Management, Change Controls, Cloud Engineering, Data Science, Design Applications, DevOps, DevOps Architecture, Git Version Control System, High Performance Computing (HPC), Incident Management, Information Management, Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure, IT Service Management (ITSM), Pandas (Software), Python (Programming Language), Python Numpy, Release Management, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, System Administration, System Designs {+ 2 more}

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

09/28/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.