Yes you need to install an MPI implementation such as OpenMPI or MPICH. You probably also want to install a scheduler such as TGSFKA Sun Grid Engine (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Grid_Engine), Torque, or Slurm. All of these contain a program called qsub which launches multiple copies of a job in parallel across machines. Perfect for MPI.

A vanilla compiler will suffice for MPI code, so you don't need anything special at build time.