Senior Linux Systems Engineer

Please send a resume should you be interested in the following Senior Linux Systems Engineer position. This is a full-time, permanent position, $110K - 120K salary depending on experience along with bonus and benefits. If you're not interested, please pass it along to your colleagues as we do pay referral fees. Title: Senior Linux Systems Engineer Location: Chicago, IL Hybrid Work Schedule : 3 days in office 2 work from home Salary: $110K - 120K bonus benefits Term: Full-time Sponsorship/3rd Party C2C/Transfer: No Referral Fee: $500 - Refer qualified colleagues, friends, or family. PLEASE NOTE: This position is based on-prem with no cloud exposure. This is NOT a DevOps role. About the Role: We are looking for a talented Senior Linux Systems Engineer with extensive experience in configuration management, infrastructure as code, and the ability to navigate complex, multiphase projects. This role requires a highly technical individual who can lead efforts to optimize infrastructure, streamline automation, and effectively diagnose and mitigate problems in multi-tier web applications. Responsibilities: Infrastructure Design & Management: Design, implement, and maintain both physical and logical Linux-based infrastructure across a diverse range of hardware platforms, ensuring high availability, scalability, and performance. Collaboration & Project Management: Work closely with development teams to craft solutions for products and features. Define and outline the steps needed for complex, multiphase projects, ensuring clarity in scope and timelines. Propose, implement, and evaluate new technologies and solutions through Proof of Concept (PoC) efforts. Automation & Configuration Management: Develop and maintain utilities to automate routine tasks using Ansible (preferred). Drive infrastructure as code (IaC) practices to manage systems efficiently and ensure consistency in deployments. Log Aggregation & Incident Management: Design and implement log aggregation and analytics solutions (e.g., ELK, Splunk, Graylog) to monitor, diagnose, and resolve incidents effectively. Provide comprehensive post-incident reporting and root cause analysis, ensuring timely updates to stakeholders and continuous improvement. Support & Troubleshooting: Provide support for existing products and infrastructure, including incident diagnosis, escalation, resolution, and reporting. Be available for on-call support as needed, ensuring the stability and reliability of critical services. Minimum Qualifications: 5 years of Linux Experience: Hands-on experience with RHEL, Ubuntu, or derivatives is essential. Deep Knowledge of Configuration Management & Automation: Proficient in using and maintaining configuration management tools such as Ansible (preferred), Puppet, or Chef to automate infrastructure tasks and manage infrastructure as code (IaC). Strong scripting skills in Bash, Python, or Perl to enhance automation processes. Project Leadership & Process Design: Proven ability to identify, outline, and manage the necessary steps in complex multiphase projects. Strong skills in coordinating cross-functional teams and documenting project stages clearly. Technical Proficiency in: Virtualization concepts (type 1 & 2 hypervisors, OS containers, app containers) Distributed systems (clustering, CAP, RAFT, erasure coding) Load balancing strategies and technologies Networking (VLANs, LACP, OSI layers, VXLAN) Application and deployment design (CI/CD pipelines, 12-factor apps, dependency management) Service meshes and service discovery Proficient in Configuring: Web servers (Apache / PHP with TLS and multiple named vhosts) DNS (BIND / NSD for zone updates and replication) Databases (MySQL / Postgres with secure configurations and access management) File systems (LVM, NFS, ZFS) Pluses: Experience with: Designing and maintaining log aggregation and monitoring systems to collect, analyze, and derive insights from logs for troubleshooting and performance optimization. Use of Pandas, DuckDB, SQL to transform and analyze various data Configuring Python or Perl application stacks (uWSGI, supervisord) Mail services (Postfix, Dovecot, amavisd) Experience configuring Oracle, MS SQL, and NoSQL databases Virtualization platforms like XenServer, XCP-NG, and VMware PHP programming Configuring and/or operating in PCI-compliant environments LDAP management