Systems Engineer (Linux)- Day Shift

Overview

The Systems Engineer (Linux) is the senior technical authority for the Institute's Linux estate, responsible for building, configuring, hardening, patching and operating Linux servers and cloud infrastructure. The role supports Linux applications and platforms, automation, vulnerability remediation, resilience, global operations and technical leadership while working an assigned day shift within a multidisciplinary infrastructure team.

What you'll do

• Provision, configure, harden and maintain Linux servers across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky, Oracle Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu on physical hardware, VMware, Nutanix and cloud.
• Maintain standardized, automated build pipelines and golden images with parity between on-premises and cloud builds.
• Administer Linux filesystems and LVM, storage presentation and multipath, networking, system services, kernel parameters, performance tuning, user and Sudo access, SSH and certificate management.
• Administer Linux workloads on VMware, Nutanix and physical server hardware, including firmware currency and OEM support status.
• Integrate Linux hosts with enterprise directory and access management using Active Directory or LDAP, SSSD, Kerberos, centralized authentication and privileged access controls.
• Manage Linux subscriptions, repositories, packages, repository mirroring and content lifecycle promotion across development, test and production.
• Provide operational support for Linux instances during the assigned shift and support users and application teams in every region.
• Build, maintain and support Linux-hosted application services, including Apache, NGINX, Tomcat, JBoss, middleware, containers and runtime dependencies.
• Support database hosting on Linux at the platform layer, including filesystem layout, kernel and resource tuning and backup interfaces.
• Act as second and third level escalation for complex Linux, application platform and performance issues, troubleshoot to root cause across operating system, storage, network and application layers and liaise with vendors.
• Monitor system health and capacity, tune alerting and respond to degradation before it becomes an incident.
• Support application deployment and release activity, including environment preparation, pre- and post-deployment validation and rollback.
• Execute recurring patching cycles across the global Linux estate in line with security, compliance and maintenance-window requirements.
• Remediate enterprise vulnerability-management findings, track items to closure and report remediation status, risk acceptance and exceptions.
• Maintain CIS benchmarks or equivalent hardening baselines and use Ansible to enforce and remediate configuration drift.
• Manage kernel updates, live patching, reboot orchestration and cluster-aware patching.
• Perform structured pre-patch and post-patch validation and document every patching cycle.
• Follow and enforce change control, tested rollback planning and maintenance-window coordination, and support audits with documented evidence.
• Build and maintain Ansible playbooks, roles, collections and inventories for provisioning, hardening, patching, application deployment and configuration-drift remediation.
• Operate Ansible Automation Platform or AWX, including job templates, workflows, credentials, scheduling, inventory sources and role-based access.
• Maintain automation code in version control with peer review, testing and a documented promotion path across environments.
• Extend automation into cloud provisioning and infrastructure-as-code and integrate with CI/CD pipelines where application teams use them.
• Develop Bash and Python scripts where Ansible is not the right tool and quantify the manual effort removed by each automation delivered.
• Administer Linux instances in AWS and Microsoft Azure, including compute, block and object storage, images, virtual networking, security groups and resource tagging.
• Maintain build, hardening, patching and monitoring parity between cloud and on-premises Linux instances.
• Manage cloud identity and access for Linux hosts, including IAM roles, instance profiles, key and secret management, and bastion or session-manager access patterns.
• Support assessment, migration and rollback of Linux workloads between on-premises and cloud.
• Monitor and optimize cloud consumption through right-sizing, commitment planning, removal of orphaned volumes and snapshots, and budget-variance reporting.
• Configure protection for Linux workloads at build, including backup agents, policies and application-consistent handling.
• Execute and validate restores of Linux systems and application data and participate in scheduled restoration testing.
• Maintain high availability and clustering for Linux workloads, including Pacemaker and Corosync, load balancing and replication.
• Participate in disaster recovery drills covering failover, failback and validation, and maintain recovery runbooks and recovery time and recovery point positions.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to junior and mid-level engineers.
• Contribute to infrastructure standards, reference builds and technology evaluation and lead root cause analysis for critical Linux incidents through post-incident review to permanent fix.
• Coordinate with network, security, database and application teams on infrastructure initiatives and complex cross-domain troubleshooting.
• Complete and verify documented handovers at shift boundaries covering open incidents, in-flight changes, running maintenance and pending actions.
• Maintain runbooks, technical documentation and documentation standards for the Linux estate.

What you'll need

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering or a closely related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years of experience in Linux systems engineering or administration, with substantial hands-on responsibility for a production Linux estate.
• Demonstrated advanced administration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or a comparable enterprise distribution, including build, hardening, filesystems and LVM, systemd, networking, kernel tuning and performance troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building and maintaining Ansible playbooks, roles and inventories for provisioning, hardening, patching and drift remediation at estate scale.
• Demonstrated experience holding automation code in version control with peer review and a promotion path across environments.
• Demonstrated hands-on administration of Linux instances in AWS or Microsoft Azure, including compute, storage, virtual networking, IAM roles and instance profiles, and secret management.
• Demonstrated experience maintaining build and patching parity between on-premises and cloud Linux instances.
• Demonstrated ownership of recurring Linux patching cycles, including validation, reboot orchestration, exception governance and compliance reporting against defined standards.
• Demonstrated experience remediating findings from an enterprise vulnerability management program, including tracking to closure and documented risk acceptance.
• Experience with CIS benchmarks or equivalent hardening baselines and with detection and remediation of configuration drift.
• Demonstrated experience supporting application services hosted on Linux, such as Apache, NGINX, Tomcat, JBoss or comparable middleware, including build and troubleshooting.
• Demonstrated experience with Linux integration into Active Directory or LDAP, including SSSD, Kerberos and centralized authentication.
• Experience administering Linux workloads on VMware and Nutanix and on physical server hardware.
• Experience with backup and restore of Linux systems and application data and participation in disaster recovery drills and restoration testing.
• Strong Bash and Python scripting ability.
• Experience operating within a formal change management process, including Change Advisory Board submission, rollback planning and post-implementation review.
• Experience working within a shift-based infrastructure team supporting a globally distributed estate, including structured handover.
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English, sufficient to coordinate with global infrastructure and application teams and communicate with senior stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience operating Ansible Automation Platform or AWX, including job templates, workflows, credentials and scheduling.
• Experience with high availability and clustering for Linux workloads, such as Pacemaker and Corosync, load balancing or replication.
• Experience with containers and container platforms such as Docker, Podman, Kubernetes or OpenShift.
• Experience with Red Hat Satellite or an equivalent subscription, repository and content lifecycle management tool.
• Certification such as Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) or Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA).
• Certification such as an AWS or Microsoft Azure associate-level credential or Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation.
• ITIL 4 Foundation or equivalent demonstrated knowledge of incident, change and problem practice.

Details

• Location: GIA Services Private Limited (Navi, Mumbai).
• Work an assigned day shift within a multidisciplinary infrastructure team.
• Support users and application teams across every region and multiple time zones.
• Report to the Manager IT Infrastructure for the assigned shift.
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