Senior Linux Administrator

Job Description: Linux Server Admin L2
Job Title: Linux Server Admin L2
Band: Band 2
Experience: 4 to 8 years
Qualification: Bachelors degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience)
Location: Chennai (work from Office)
Shift: Rotational shifts, including 24x7 on-call/support rotation as per business requirement
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced L2 Linux Server Admin to manage, support, and troubleshoot our Linux-based server and container environment. The ideal candidate will bring strong, hands-on Linux OS administration skills as the primary requirement for this role, along with working knowledge of container platform administration (Kubernetes and Docker), and virtualization/hypervisor platforms (VMware or Nutanix) as a secondary skill. The candidate will handle day-to-day Linux and container operations, deep-dive troubleshooting, and platform reliability tasks, working closely with L1 support and L3/Infrastructure Architects, and coordinating with the Hypervisor/Virtualization and Platform Engineering teams where Linux workloads are hosted on virtualized or containerized infrastructure.
Key Responsibilities
Linux Server Administration (Primary Skill)

• Manage and support Linux server environments (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu/SUSE) including installation, configuration, patching, and version upgrades.
• Perform day-to-day operations, incident and problem management (L2 escalations from L1), and RCA within defined SLAs for Linux-hosted systems and applications.
• Administer user/group management, file system and LVM management, disk/partition management, and storage mount configurations.
• Manage core Linux services SSH, cron/systemd job scheduling, DNS/NFS/Samba, web/application servers, and package management (yum/dnf/apt).
• Perform kernel and OS patch management, including patch cycle planning, testing, deployment, and compliance reporting.
• Configure and manage high availability and clustering solutions for Linux workloads (Pacemaker/Corosync or equivalent).
• Manage backup and recovery activities for Linux systems, including backup job monitoring, restore validation, and DR drills.
• Automate routine administrative tasks using Shell/Bash and Python scripting, and configuration management tools (Ansible/Puppet/Chef).

Container Platform Administration (Kubernetes & Docker)

• Administer and support Docker container environments image management, container lifecycle operations, networking, volumes, and Docker daemon/host-level configuration.
• Provide L2-level administration and support for Kubernetes clusters node management, pod/deployment troubleshooting, namespace and resource quota management, and cluster health monitoring.
• Perform routine Kubernetes operations cluster upgrades, node patching, certificate renewal, and etcd/control-plane health checks, in coordination with L3/Platform Engineering teams.
• Troubleshoot container and orchestration-level issues pod crash loops, image pull failures, networking (CNI) issues, persistent volume/storage class problems, and resource contention (CPU/memory limits and requests).
• Manage container registries, image builds/pipelines integration points, and basic Helm chart deployment/troubleshooting.
• Support RBAC, secrets management, and namespace-level access control within Kubernetes environments.
• Monitor container and cluster health using tools such as Prometheus/Grafana, Kubernetes Dashboard, or equivalent, and proactively flag capacity or performance risks.
• Coordinate with Platform Engineering/DevOps teams on CI/CD pipeline-related deployment issues affecting containerized Linux workloads.

Hypervisor & Virtualization Support (Secondary Skill)

• Provide L2-level support for Linux virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere/ESXi or Nutanix AHV/Prism environments, including basic VM lifecycle operations (provisioning, cloning, snapshots, resizing).
• Coordinate with the Hypervisor/Virtualization team on host-level issues affecting Linux VMs resource contention, storage/datastore connectivity, and VM performance degradation.
• Support basic troubleshooting of VM-level issues boot failures, guest tools/VM tools issues, and resource allocation problems for Linux guest OS instances.
• Assist with capacity and performance monitoring of Linux VMs within the virtualization platform (vROps, Nutanix Prism monitoring, or equivalent).

Troubleshooting

• Diagnose and resolve Linux OS-level issues boot failures, kernel panics, service crashes, driver conflicts, disk/memory pressure, and performance degradation.
• Troubleshoot networking issues on Linux systems interface configuration, routing, firewall (iptables/firewalld), and DNS resolution problems.
• Investigate storage-related issues filesystem corruption, LVM errors, disk space exhaustion, and mount point failures.
• Troubleshoot authentication and access issues LDAP/AD integration (SSSD/Winbind), sudo/permission errors, and SSH key-based access problems.
• Perform root cause analysis for recurring incidents and drive permanent fixes in coordination with L3/Architecture teams.

Security & Access

• Implement and manage role-based access control (RBAC), sudo policies, and least-privilege access principles across Linux systems and Kubernetes namespaces.
• Support hardening of Linux servers and container environments as per organizational security baselines and CIS benchmarks (including CIS Docker and Kubernetes benchmarks).
• Manage SSH key management, certificates, and integration with enterprise secret/credential stores, including Kubernetes secrets management.
• Ensure compliance with patch SLAs, vulnerability remediation timelines (including container image vulnerability scanning), and audit requirements.

Platform & Automation

• Contribute to platform standardization golden image/template creation, baseline configuration, and build documentation for Linux servers and container base images.
• Work with monitoring and observability tools (Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, Prometheus, or similar) to proactively identify performance and capacity issues across Linux and container environments.
• Support Infrastructure as Code practices for provisioning and managing Linux servers and Kubernetes resources where applicable (Terraform, Ansible, Helm).
• Document runbooks, SOPs, architecture diagrams, and knowledge base articles for recurring Linux and container-related issues.
• Participate in on-call rotation and support during planned maintenance/outages.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 4 to 8 years of hands-on experience in Linux server administration (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu/SUSE) as the primary skill set.
• Strong command over Linux system administration user/file/storage management, service management, patching, and shell scripting.
• Hands-on working knowledge of Docker and Kubernetes administration container lifecycle management, cluster operations, and troubleshooting of container/pod-level issues.
• Working knowledge of virtualization/hypervisor platforms (VMware vSphere/ESXi or Nutanix AHV/Prism) sufficient to support Linux VMs and coordinate with the virtualization team.
• Deep troubleshooting experience across Linux OS, storage, networking, and authentication/access issues.
• Working knowledge of backup and DR tools/processes for Linux-based workloads.

Preferred / Good to Have

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) or equivalent Linux certification.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Docker Certified Associate (DCA) certification.
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP) or Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP) as a secondary/good-to-have certification.
• Experience with configuration management and automation tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform, Helm).
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines and GitOps practices (Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, or similar) for containerized application deployment.
• Experience with monitoring/observability tools (Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, Prometheus).
• Knowledge of cloud-hosted Linux and Kubernetes environments (AWS EC2/EKS, Azure VMs/AKS) in addition to on-prem virtualization.

Soft Skills

• Strong communication skills to collaborate with Infrastructure, Virtualization, Platform Engineering, and Security teams.
• Ability to work independently under SLA pressure in a 24x7 support environment.
• Analytical, methodical troubleshooting approach with an ownership mindset.
• Continuous learning attitude given the evolving Linux, containerization, and virtualization ecosystem.