Personal
- Active in the open-source community
- Running enthusiast: Marathon finisher (VLC 2024: 2:53:05)
- Chess enthusiast (Lichess)
- Continuous learning and skill development (philosophy, cooking, technology trends)
Infrastructure specialist at the HPC + DevOps + Kubernetes intersection
I’m a Senior HPC Architect & DevOps Engineer at DoITNow with experience building high-performance computing infrastructure. I specialize in bringing HPC and modern DevOps together to orchestrate compute-intensive workloads (genomics, ML training, scientific simulations).
What I Do
I architect and deploy infrastructure platforms that enable research and innovation at scale. My expertise spans the intersection of these domains:
- HPC Systems: Designing and deploying high-performance computing environments for research and enterprise applications
- Cloud-Native Infrastructure: Mainly Kubernetes platforms for compute workloads across multiple clouds (Azure, AWS, on-premises)
- Infrastructure Automation: Infrastructure-as-Code tooling (Terraform, Ansible, Juju) and CI/CD automation for repeatable deployments
Recent Work
Portable Genomic Analysis Infrastructure Led the design and deployment of an infrastructure platform for orchestrating genomic analysis workflows at scale on Kubernetes. This platform combines:
- Workflow orchestration (Argo Workflows, Nextflow, Cromwell)
- Kubernetes resource management and job queuing (Kueue)
- Infrastructure-as-Code provisioning across Azure, AWS, bare metal (Terraform)
- CI/CD automation via Bitbucket Pipelines
Result: Enabled researchers to deploy multiple reproducible, scalable bioinformatics pipelines
Canonical Charmed OpenStack Private Cloud Architected and deployed a production OpenStack environment (MAAS + Juju + OpenStack) providing:
- Scalable HPC workloads for compute-intensive research over virtualized resources
- Kubernetes clusters for containerized applications over virtualized resources
Result: Delivered a flexible private cloud solution supporting diverse workloads for different research groups
Current Focus
- Scaling Kubernetes for compute-intensive workloads
- Infrastructure automation and CI/CD at scale
- Emerging container orchestration technologies (Kueue)
Professional Strengths
- Efficient adaptation when facing cutting-edge technologies, pioneer work methodologies and more demanding responsibilities
- Resourceful skills driven by continuous learning and knowledge expansion
- Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and senior management teams
- Excellent attention to detail
Technical Skills
Cloud Platforms & Container Orchestration
- Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, OCI, GCP, Hetzner, DigitalOcean
- Containers: Kubernetes, Docker/Compose/Swarm, Singularity, HELM
- Workflow Orchestration: Argo Workflows, Nextflow, Cromwell
- Resource Management: Kueue, autoscaling
HPC & High-Performance Systems
- HPC Systems: Massive provisioning (xCAT, Cobbler, OpenHPC), schedulers (Slurm, LSF), parallel filesystems (GPFS, Lustre, BeeGFS), kernel tuning
- Compute Optimization: Performance troubleshooting, resource allocation, workload management
Infrastructure Automation
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Juju, Ansible, Saltstack
- CI/CD & Automation: Bitbucket Pipelines, Github Actions, ArgoCD, GitOps workflows
Virtualization & Provisioning
- Virtualization: KVM/QEMU, oVirt, Proxmox, VMWare (ESXi, Vsphere), XenServer, OpenNebula
- Bare Metal Provisioning: MAAS (Metal as a Service)
Monitoring & Observability
- Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Icinga, Ganglia, ELK Stack
- Log Aggregation: ELK Stack, centralized logging
IT Services & Infrastructure
- Operating Systems: GNU/Linux systems, MS Windows
- IT Services: OpenLDAP, Bind DNS, DHCP, SAMBA, NFS, Mail Servers, Git (Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket)
- Backup Solutions: restic, Veeam Backup, Tivoli TSM
- Security: Linux hardening (fail2ban, iptables, sudosh, snoopy, ACLS)
Databases
- Databases: MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
- Data Management: Backup automation, data retention policies
Programming & Scripting
- Scripting Languages: Bash, Python, Powershell, Perl
- Development: Java (foundational knowledge)
Certifications & Recognition
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate - Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Issued Nov 2022
- BeeGFS System Engineer Certification - ThinkParQ (the company behind BeeGFS) - Issued Mar 2021
- LPIC-OT: DevOps Tools Engineer - PUE - Issued Jul 2020
- Certified Linux Administrator (LPIC-1) - PUE - Issued Sep 2019
- Agile Methodologies Course - UPC School (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) - Issued Feb 2019
- PATC Systems Workshop: Petaflop System Administration - PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) - Issued Mar 2018
- PATC Systems Workshop: Programming MareNostrum 4 - PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) - Issued Feb 2018
Languages: Spanish, Catalan (native), English (professional working proficiency)
Let’s Connect
Interested in discussing HPC architecture, Kubernetes for compute workloads, infrastructure automation, or genomic analysis infrastructure?
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jtorrex
- GitHub: github.com/jtorrex
- Email: jtorrex (at) posteo.net