Systems Engineer (Linux) - Swing Shift

Overview

The Systems Engineer (Linux) is the senior technical authority for the Institute's Linux estate, responsible for configuration, hardening, patching, automation, cloud infrastructure, application platform support, resilience and day-to-day operations. The role works a swing shift within a multidisciplinary infrastructure team, supports a globally distributed estate and provides technical leadership to less experienced engineers.

What you'll do

• Provision, configure, harden and maintain Linux servers across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky, Oracle Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu on premises and in cloud through decommissioning.
• Maintain standardized automated build pipelines and golden images with parity between on-premises and cloud builds.
• Administer 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 Active Directory or LDAP through 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 to users and application teams in every region.
• Build, maintain and support Linux-hosted web and application servers, middleware, containers and runtime dependencies with application owners.
• 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, troubleshooting to root cause across operating system, storage, network and application layers and liaising 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 and remediate enterprise vulnerability-management findings through closure, with validation, exception governance and compliance reporting.
• Maintain CIS or equivalent hardening baselines and use Ansible to enforce and remediate configuration drift.
• Manage kernel updates, live patching, reboot orchestration and cluster-aware patching.
• Follow change control, 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 drift remediation.
• Operate Ansible Automation Platform or AWX where deployed, 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 used by application teams.
• Develop Bash and Python scripting where Ansible is not the right tool, and quantify manual effort removed by each automation delivery.
• Administer Linux instances in AWS and Microsoft Azure, including compute, storage, images, virtual networking, security groups, resource tagging, IAM roles, instance profiles, secrets and bastion or session-manager access.
• Maintain build, hardening, patching and monitoring parity between cloud and on-premises Linux instances.
• 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 backup protection at build, execute and validate restores, and participate in restoration testing.
• Maintain high availability and clustering, including Pacemaker and Corosync, load balancing and replication.
• Participate in disaster recovery drills and maintain recovery runbooks and recovery time and recovery point position for in-scope Linux platforms.
• 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 permanent fix.
• Coordinate with network, security, database and application teams on infrastructure initiatives and cross-domain troubleshooting.
• Complete and verify documented shift handovers covering open incidents, in-flight changes, maintenance and pending actions.
• Maintain runbooks and technical 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Hands-on administration of Linux instances in AWS or Microsoft Azure, including compute, storage, virtual networking, IAM roles and instance profiles, and secret management.
• Experience maintaining build and patching parity between on-premises and cloud Linux instances.
• Ownership of recurring Linux patching cycles, including validation, reboot orchestration, exception governance and compliance reporting against defined standards.
• 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 detection and remediation of configuration drift.
• Experience supporting Linux-hosted application services such as Apache, NGINX, Tomcat, JBoss or comparable middleware, including build and troubleshooting.
• Experience integrating Linux 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: Navi, Mumbai.
• Work a swing shift within a multidisciplinary infrastructure team.
• Support users and application teams across multiple regions and time zones.
• Complete structured handovers at shift boundaries.