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Will Paik
Author
Will Paik
I optimize large-scale GPU clusters for AI/ML workloads. Outside of work, I build a mini-supercomputer from consumer hardware and document every step of it here.

HPC Engineer with 9+ years of experience in system architecture and performance optimization for scientific and AI/ML workloads. Focus on translating hardware capabilities into real-world application performance, particularly for large-scale AI/ML training. Experienced in supporting diverse research needs across university clusters, statewide research infrastructure, and custom-built systems.


Experience
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HPC Machine Learning Performance Engineer Research Computing, Northeastern University | Jan 2025 – Present

  • Optimizing distributed ML workloads on production HPC clusters
  • Performance analysis and benchmarking for AI/ML applications
  • Supporting researchers with computational workflow optimization across multiple disciplines

GPU Training Benchmarking, AICR Benchmarking Group Massachusetts AI Computing Resource (AICR) | 2026

  • Contributed to statewide AI research infrastructure benchmarking initiative (independent of Northeastern)
  • Responsible for GPU training workload benchmarking within a broader cross-institutional effort
  • Evaluation targets include B200 and RTX Pro 6000 clusters across multi-node configurations

HPC Software Consultant Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Penn State University | Jan 2017 – Dec 2024

  • 8 years supporting 500+ researchers across multiple disciplines
  • Cluster performance optimization and user support
  • Developed containerized environments for reproducible research (Singularity Hub contributor)
  • System monitoring, resource allocation, and job optimization

Parallel Computing Support Application Engineer (Internship) MathWorks | Summer 2021

  • Optimized parallel computing toolboxes for MATLAB
  • Developed performance benchmarks for distributed computing
  • Created documentation for HPC integration with MATLAB

Technical Skills
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Category Tools
Schedulers Slurm, PBS (job arrays, dependency chains, resource optimization)
Parallel Computing MPI (OpenMPI, Intel MPI), OpenMP, CUDA
Storage NFS, parallel filesystems, data management strategies
Containerization Singularity/Apptainer, Docker, Podman
Automation Ansible, Bash scripting, system provisioning
Monitoring Prometheus, Grafana, performance metrics
Languages Python, C/C++, Fortran, MATLAB, Shell scripting
Version Control Git, GitLab CI/CD
Performance Profiling, optimization, bottleneck analysis

Projects
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Project Description
HPC From Scratch 6-node cluster from consumer hardware. Slurm, Ansible, NFS, FreeIPA, Lmod.
PyTorch DDP Benchmark Multi-GPU/multi-node distributed training scaling benchmark for HPC clusters. [GitHub]
pkg_audit RPM package consistency audit tool with Slurm partition sweep and Ansible remediation. [GitHub]
4D LiDAR SLAM Optimization Parallelized point cloud processing for real-time ROS 2 performance
Side Projects (upcoming) Game of Life web app, browser poker, ESP32-P4 thermal camera

Other Engineering Projects

NIST First Responder UAS Indoor Challenge (2022) Award: 3rd place + First Responder’s Choice (Prize: $80,000) Custom quadcopter for GPS-denied indoor emergency scenarios. [nist.gov]

VFS Design-Build-Vertical Flight Student Competition (2021 and 2022) Award: 3rd place (2022), 1st place in preliminary reports + Best Computational Simulation Award (2021). [engr.psu.edu]

9th and 10th ESA Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (2017 and 2019) Developed parallel algorithms for complex trajectory optimization. [psu.edu]


Education
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The Pennsylvania State University

Degree Year Notes
PhD, Aerospace Engineering 2024 Minor in Computational Science. Dissertation: Multiple Gravity-Assist Trajectory Design with Continuous-Thrust Synergetic Maneuvers
MS, Aerospace Engineering 2015 Minor in Computational Science. Thesis: Optimal Orbit Raising Via Particle Swarm Optimization
BS, Aerospace Engineering 2013

Talks & Workshops
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See the Talks page for details.

Talk Venue Year
Introduction to Parallel Computing Northeastern University Spring 2026
Linux Essentials for HPC Researchers Northeastern University Spring 2026
Teaching Assistant – Aerospace Analysis, Programming for Engineers Penn State Unversity 2015–2016