Linux System Engineer

Role Overview

We are seeking a Linux Systems Engineer at L2/L3 level to provide support for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) platform across a distributed environment of approximately 20 hypervisors. The customer’s Linux team is responsible for hypervisor maintenance, including monitoring and vulnerability handling. The service provider team focuses on managing the VDI layer, addressing user issues, troubleshooting Linux OS, patching and hardening, automation and configuration management, as well as limited scientific runtime enablement and container/VDI operations.

Core Responsibilities

• Deliver advanced L2/L3 Linux systems support by resolving incidents and service requests from researchers, faculty, and students.
• Troubleshoot operating system issues such as boot problems, kernel or service failures, package management conflicts, OS upgrades, and migrations.
• Drive vulnerability management, conduct OS patching and hardening activities in compliance with security standards.
• Perform system performance tuning on CPU, memory, disk and GPU resources as needed.
• Support and maintain configuration management tools like Ansible and Puppet, including regular updates to playbooks.
• Administer OS-level agents for monitoring and compliance using tools such as Nessus, Automox, and Puppet.
• Contribute to root cause analysis leveraging diagnostics and log examination to prevent incident recurrence through automation and lifecycle enhancements.
• Set up and manage scientific environment modules (e.g., Lmod/Modules), ensuring correct runtime and dependency resolution to enable reliable use of scientific toolchains.
• Troubleshoot VDI platform components including session access, performance issues, scheduling, workload management, and container operations.
• Collaborate with other teams to resolve cross-domain issues involving hypervisors, schedulers, and containers.
• Implement automation-first approaches employing advanced scripting with Bash and Python, alongside configuration management with Ansible, Puppet, and GitLab CI/CD.
• Maintain infrastructure lifecycle processes through automated workflows to replace manual intervention.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Proven expertise in Linux administration with specific experience on Ubuntu LTS and Rocky Linux distributions.
• Hands-on experience managing NVIDIA GPU-enabled compute environments.
• Background working with scientific software, specifically runtime and module enablement.
• Proficiency in managing environment modules and handling software dependency orchestration.
• Experience with configuring and supporting network-attached storage systems using NFS and SMB protocols.
• Willingness and ability to provide on-site physical infrastructure support as required.
• Strong automation skills including use of Ansible, Puppet, Automox, and GitLab CI/CD for infrastructure as code and configuration management.
• Advanced scripting skills in Bash and Python to enable automation-first operational practices and system integration.
• Experience in troubleshooting VDI environments, particularly involving SLURM, AWS DCV, Docker, and Kasm Workspaces, is highly favored.

Technologies in Scope

• VDI Platforms: SLURM, AWS DCV, Docker, Kasm Workspaces
• Linux OS: Ubuntu LTS, Rocky Linux, system and service troubleshooting, patching, hardening, performance tuning
• Automation & Configuration Management: Ansible, Puppet, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) mindset, GitLab CI/CD, Automox
• Scientific Runtime: Environment modules and dependency management
• Storage Systems: Network File System (NFS), Server Message Block (SMB)
• Agents & Compliance Tools: Nessus, Automox, Puppet-based tooling

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a competent Linux engineer capable of confidently managing advanced Linux support tasks (L2/L3), performing system patching and hardening responsibly, enhancing reliability through automation, enabling scientific runtime environments without deep application debugging, and providing effective support for VDI user issues and container workloads.