Senior Linux Administrator

Introduction

We are seeking a Senior Linux Administrator on a six-month contract to take ownership of Linux estate: keep it patched, hardened and available and steadily replace manual toil with automation. This is not a ticket-queue seat. You are here because the environment needs someone who can see the architecture whole - dependencies, integrations, failure modes - and improve it rather than just keep it alive.

Responsibilities

Linux Administration and Operations

• Install, configure, patch, upgrade and troubleshoot Linux servers across RHEL and Amazon Linux 2023.
• Monitor availability, performance, capacity, security and compliance across the estate and act on trends before they become incidents.
• Administer users, groups, permissions and sudo access and support centralised authentication through Active Directory, LDAP and SSSD.
• Manage DNS configurations and resolve name-resolution issues end to end.

Cloud and Storage

• Manage Linux workloads and supporting infrastructure in AWS, including EC2, EBS, S3, IAM, Systems Manager, CloudWatch and Route 53.
• Design, provision and manage storage for Linux servers - file systems, LVM, mounts, permissions, NFS and SAN/NAS.
• Own backup, snapshot and recovery processes, including AMIs, instance profiles and security group configuration.

Automation and Engineering

• Develop and maintain Ansible playbooks, roles, inventories and templates, using Ansible Vault for secrets.
• Build and schedule Rundeck jobs to orchestrate patching, deployments and routine maintenance, with appropriate access control and logging.
• Automate repetitive administrative work using Bash or Python and retire manual runbook steps as you go.

Reliability and Improvement

• Lead root-cause analysis on recurring incidents and implement permanent corrective actions.
• Identify risks, capacity constraints and performance bottlenecks proactively and propose the architectural change that removes them.
• Harden and secure the estate - vulnerability remediation, patch cadence, access controls and compliance evidence.
• Maintain architecture diagrams, configuration standards, runbooks and recovery procedures as living documents.

Collaboration and Support

• Partner with application, database, network, security, cloud and storage teams on shared dependencies.
• Participate in incident response, change management, migrations and disaster-recovery testing.
• Mentor junior administrators and provide technical direction on Linux and AWS decisions.
• Provide occasional after-hours or weekend support for production incidents and scheduled maintenance windows.

Requirements

• 8 to 12 years administering enterprise Linux environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with RHEL and Amazon Linux 2023 in production.
• Deep understanding of Linux architecture - boot process, systemd, services, processes, networking and file systems.
• Proven experience running Linux workloads on AWS at production scale.
• Experience with Linux security hardening, vulnerability remediation, patching and access control.
• Availability for a 6-month contract, working Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 17:00 US Central Time, fully remote.

Additional Skills

• Strong troubleshooting across boundaries - Linux, AWS, storage, networking, authentication and application dependencies.
• Cross-functional collaboration with application, database, network, security and cloud teams.
• Documentation discipline - runbooks, standards, diagrams and recovery procedures kept current.
• Independent priority management in a distributed, remote engagement.

Core Skills

• RHEL and Amazon Linux 2023 administration.
• AWS - EC2, EBS, S3, IAM, Systems Manager, CloudWatch, Route 53, security groups, IAM roles, instance profiles, AMIs and snapshots.
• Ansible - playbooks, roles, inventories, variables, templates and Ansible Vault.
• Rundeck - job creation, scheduling, access control, logging and workflow automation.
• Storage - LVM, NFS, SAN/NAS, multipathing, file systems and capacity management.
• DNS configuration and name-resolution troubleshooting.
• Authentication - sudo, SSSD, LDAP and Active Directory integration.
• Scripting - Bash and Python.

Preferred / Good to Have

• Experience designing and supporting highly available, business-critical Linux environments (good to have).
• Experience migrating workloads from older distributions to RHEL or Amazon Linux 2023 (good to have).
• Familiarity with the AWS Well-Architected Framework (good to have).
• Monitoring and log management with CloudWatch, Datadog or equivalent (good to have).
• Infrastructure-as-code and configuration management beyond Ansible, such as Terraform (good to have).
• Familiarity with ITIL practices - incident, problem and change management (good to have).
• Certifications such as AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, AWS Solutions Architect, RHCSA or RHCE (good to have).

Quality Compliance

Compliance to Quality and Information Security is critical in ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, availability of data and the consistent delivery of high-quality services are an important aspect of hiring for this position.

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Disclaimer: This job posting has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.