Senior HPC Engineer
Building the infrastructure that makes impossible computing possible.
RedLine Performance Solutions · on contract at NASA Ames Research Center
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clay_fandre
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Senior HPC Administrator
RedLine Performance Solutions, LLC
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NASA Ames Research Center
NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division
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HPC Infrastructure & Architecture
Unix/Linux Systems Administration
Cluster Engineering & Automation
Multi-vendor HPC Consulting
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In a van down by the river
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About
Clay Fandre has spent his career solving problems most computers can't. As a Senior HPC Engineer, he designs, deploys, and optimizes the high-performance computing infrastructure that powers breakthroughs in aerospace, defense, science, and enterprise — the clusters and supercomputing systems where ordinary hardware simply doesn't apply.
With a foundation in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Minnesota Duluth and over three decades in the field, Clay has built deep expertise across the full HPC lifecycle: from architecture and procurement through systems administration, performance tuning, automation, and multi-vendor consulting.
Currently at RedLine Performance Solutions — one of the most respected names in the HPC industry — Clay brings the same competitive precision to engineering that he once brought to the basketball court at UMD.
Current Contract
Clay is currently on contract at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, supporting the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division — the agency's premier supercomputing facility, where the machines that model spacecraft, simulate climate, and design the next era of flight live.
One of the largest and most powerful visualization systems in the world — a 300-square-foot wall of screens pushing over one billion pixels. Now in its fourth generation, completely rebuilt in 2024, it lets scientists walk up to their simulations and explore supercomputer-scale results in real time.
NASA's most powerful supercomputer, brought online in early 2026 — 20.13 petaflops of peak performance, housed in the Modular Supercomputing Facility at Ames.
Petascale systems like Aitken run around the clock in a modular facility built for growth — the workhorses behind NASA's aeronautics, Artemis, and Earth-science workloads.
From simulating launch aerodynamics to rendering global climate models, NAS computing touches nearly every NASA mission. Keeping infrastructure like that healthy is what an HPC engineer lives for.
Career
In a van down by the river
Delivering world-class HPC solutions across the full system lifecycle using RedLine's proprietary Performance Methodology (RPM). Currently on contract at NASA Ames Research Center, supporting the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division — home of the Athena and Aitken supercomputers and the billion-pixel hyperwall.
Aerospace & Defense
Designed and managed HPC architecture for one of the world's leading aerospace and defense companies, supporting mission-critical simulation, modeling, and engineering workloads.
Enterprise-scale HPC systems administration and support, delivering managed services and infrastructure operations across large-scale computing environments.
HPC systems engineering and administration, supporting complex cluster environments and delivering high-availability computing infrastructure.
Early-career engineering role building a foundation in systems infrastructure and computing operations.
1992 – 1997 · Duluth, MN
Graduated with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Also competed on the UMD basketball team — where he met his late wife, Wendy.
Expertise
Designing high-performance computing infrastructure from the ground up — cluster layout, interconnects, storage hierarchies, and workload scheduling for maximum throughput.
Deep expertise across Linux distributions and Unix environments. From kernel tuning to user management, storage mounts to network configuration.
Squeezing every last FLOP out of a system. Profiling bottlenecks, optimizing MPI workloads, tuning filesystems, and benchmarking against real-world application demands.
Eliminating manual toil through scripting, configuration management, and orchestration. Reproducible, reliable infrastructure at any scale.
Fluent across the HPC vendor ecosystem — from compute and networking to storage and accelerators. Independent expertise, not tied to a single stack.
Translating complex computing requirements into actionable architecture decisions. Working with clients across aerospace, defense, enterprise, and research.
Beyond Work
Played D2 basketball at the University of Minnesota Duluth — where the game introduced him to his late wife Wendy. The sport remains a cornerstone of the Fandre family story.
Father of Lily Fandre — First Team All-Patriot League, 1,000-point scorer at Lehigh University, and now a professional basketball player in Australia's NBL1 Women's League. The apple didn't fall far from the court.
See Lily's story →Rooted in In a van down by the river — a proud Minnesotan and UMD Bulldog who has built a career in some of the most demanding computing environments in the country.
Get in Touch
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