Assistant Vice President (AVP) of Research Computing InfrastructureJob no: Work type: Staff
Location: VCU Main Campus
Categories: Information Technology
Duties & Responsibilities:Reporting to the Chief Information Officer (VCU Technology Services) and maintaining a close collaborative relationship with the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI), the Assistant Vice President (AVP) of Research Computing Infrastructure serves as the senior executive and chief architect responsible for VCU's advanced research computing ecosystem. This executive provides strategic vision, leadership, and direction for design, deployment, expansion, and operational excellence of the university's research technology infrastructure. Supporting VCU's mission as a leading urban R1 public research university, the AVP guides the development and stewardship of high performance computing, large scale and archival research data storage, high speed research networking visualization technologies, research software platforms, and specialized support services. Through these efforts, the AVP enables transformative, interdisciplinary research and discovery across the VCU research enterprise.
The role oversees advanced high-performance computing (HPC) environments, including GPU-accelerated platforms supporting artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), cloud-based research services, and enterprise research data storage solutions. The AVP collaborates closely with principal investigators, academic leadership, OVPRI, and VCU Technology Services to align technology investments and infrastructure roadmaps with institutional research priorities and competitive federal funding opportunities, including those sponsored by the NIH, NSF, and DoD.
The Assistant Vice President plays a critical role in development and execution of robust data governance frameworks that support evolving federal regulatory requirements and ensure VCU's advanced research computing infrastructure remains secure, scalable, high-performing, accessible, and compliant. This role leads the High Performance Research Computing team within Technology Services. As a member of the Technology Services Senior Leadership Team, the AVP partners closely with the CIO and other senior leaders to help shape the strategic direction of the division and advance institutional priorities.
Position Scope and Organizational Impact- Core Scope: Formulates and executes strategies for multi-million dollar computational infrastructure investments that advance and strengthen the university's research capabilities.
- Decision-Making Authority: Exercise strategic oversight of high-performance infrastructure lifecycles, service-level agreements (SLAs), capital expenditures, and the organizational design and development of technical teams.
- Leadership/Supervision: Directly manages a highly specialized team of HPC infrastructure architects, Linux systems engineering leads, storage administrators, cloud engineers, and research facilitators.
Core Leadership Responsibilities- Strategic Infrastructure Leadership & Vision (30%)
- In partnership with the CIO, lead the consolidation and optimization of currently distributed high-performance computing resources, infrastructure, and personnel, establishing an integrated organizational structure that enhances operational efficiency, service delivery, and strategic alignment.
- Long-Range Planning: Lead the planning, design, and execution of a sustainable, strategic roadmap for VCU's institutional research computing environment.
- Capital & Lifecycle Management: Collaborate in the development and management of a sustainable financial model for research computing infrastructure, leveraging institutional allocations, state appropriations, external grants, and cost-recovery mechanisms. Oversee multi-year capital planning, hardware lifecycle management, vendor partnerships and negotiations, and technology refresh strategies for centralized computing and storage platforms.
- Governance & Steering: Facilitate and support faculty-led research computing advisory committees to ensure infrastructure investments align with and balance the needs of quantitative health sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and emerging digital humanities disciplines.
- Technical Operations, Architecture & Service Delivery (40%)
- HPC and AI/ML Environments: Oversee the operation, performance optimization, and scalability of VCU's core on-premises High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment including compute clusters, workload schedules, GPU-accelerated resources, and multi-tiered storage systems.
- Cloud Architecture & Integration: Design and implement a secure, multi-tenant hybrid cloud brokerage framework (AWS, Azure, GCP) to facilitate compliant cloud computing and storage capabilities, enabling elastic provisioning for research computational workloads.
- Network & Fabrics: Partner with infrastructure teams to advance high performance research networking and data transfer capabilities, including Science DMZ architectures, 100G+ core capabilities, Globus, and Internet2 pathways) ensuring efficient movement of large research datasets.
- Service-Level Excellence: Establish and oversee performance standards, service level objectives, automated monitoring systems, clear maintenance-window strategies, and emergency recovery/business-continuity procedures tailored specifically for a high-volume research core. Collaborate with other units in the Division of IT to provide network, identity access and management, cloud, procurement, cybersecurity, user support, policy, and other services necessary for research computing services.
- Collaboration: Collaborate with Technology Services leadership, the Office of the CIO, and OVPRI to effectively manage budgets and finances for the HPRC and adhere to financial procedures and controls; effectively recruit, retain and develop workforce; adhere to human resources procedures and controls; and manage transactions for procurement, travel and similar areas.
- Faculty Consultation, Enablement & Grant Partnership (20%)
- Pre-Award Partnership: Collaborate proactively with Principal Investigators (PIs) on major institutional and federal research cyberinfrastructure proposals (such as NSF MRI, NIH S10, and cyberinfrastructure programs). Act as a Co-PI or technical director, providing infrastructure architecture diagrams, certified budget estimations, technical text, and letters of institutional support.
- Research Facilitation: Promote a dynamic and collaborative research support environment and synergistically engage with the university research community including researchers, deans, department heads, institute directors, and center directors. Identify, promote, and facilitate cooperative opportunities between Technology Services, OVPRI, VCU Health, research institutes, research centers, colleges and departments, and the University Libraries for research and education.
- Outreach & Training: Lead the development of ongoing onboarding seminars, user workshops, and computational bootcamps to broaden institutional awareness, lower barriers to entry, and elevate computational literacy across the VCU student and faculty collective.
- Research Data Security, Compliance & Governance (10%)
- Regulatory Alignment: In partnership with the VCU Information Security Office (ISO), OVPRI and VCU Health Systems, engineer and mandate technical infrastructure controls that satisfy complex security frameworks, including NIST SP 800-171, CMMC Level 2+, FISMA, HIPAA, and strict sponsor-mandated Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) regulations.
- Secure Research Environments: Oversee the deployment, support, and continuous auditing of research environments that enable clinical researchers to compute safely with Protected Health Information (PHI) and restricted government data datasets in collaboration with VCU Health Systems.
- Policy Development: Develop, implement, and maintain university-wide operational policies and procedures to include data retention, asset provisioning lifecycles, and identity and access management (IAM) within the research computing environment.
Required Background and Expertise- Ph.D. in a highly computational scientific or engineering discipline or equivalent academic experience.
- A minimum of eight (8) years of progressively responsible experience and managing complex enterprise or research technology infrastructures and architectures.
- Minimum of four (4) years of experience leading and developing technical teams responsible for research computing, cyberinfrastructure,networking, systems administration, or enterprise functions, preferably within a university setting, national laboratory, or advanced supercomputing center.
- Demonstrated deep expertise in modern high-performance computing (HPC) environments, including CPU and GPU architectures, parallel file systems, InfiniBand and high-speed interconnect technology, and Linux cluster provisioning and configuration management platforms like Ansible, xCAT, and Warewulf).
- Advanced knowledge in the design and stewardship of secure research computing and cyberinfrastructure environments that meet federal security and compliance requirements, including NIST SP 800-171, CMMC, and HIPAA.
- Established track record of cultivating trusted partnerships across executive leadership, academic and research units, external organizations, vendors, and community stakeholders.
- Exceptional strategic thinking, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities, with the ability to assess complex issues, drive informed decision-making, and lead multiple initiatives in a dynamic environment.
- Exceptional written, verbal, interpersonal, and presentation skills, with a demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with executive leadership, technical and non-technical audiences, and a wide array of internal and external stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to work in and foster an environment of respect, professionalism and civility with a population of faculty, staff, and students from all backgrounds and experiences, or a commitment to do so as a staff member at VCU.
Preferred Experience and Expertise- Experience in a research-intensive (R1) university environment.
- Proven experience contributing to the successful development and execution of federal research infrastructure grants (e.g., NSF, NIH, DoD), including technical leadership roles and service as a Co-Principal Investigator on cyberinfrastructure projects.
- Advanced Solutions Architect certifications in cloud ecosystems (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, Google Cloud Professional Cloud
