Linux Systems Engineer

Cape Town, permanent

Purpose of the Job

A large retail enterprise based in Cape Town seeks a Linux Systems Engineer to assist the Team Lead in the Unix Team with rolling out new Linux systems, maintaining, upgrading, replacing, and improving the long-term performance of the systems. The candidate will be responsible for the monitoring, maintenance and operation of the Linux based systems consisting of +- 460 SLES and Redhat Enterprise Linux VM's running Enterprise and Open Source Software that are key to daily business operations.

Job Objectives

To administer and support the Linux environments
• Resolve Incidents and fulfil Service Requests using a service management ticket queue and Change Management processes
• Maintaining service configurations as and when they change or are deployed

To build and maintain Linux server environments
• Develop and maintain documentation for standards, processes, policies and procedures
• Work within established configuration and change management policies to ensure awareness, approval, and success of changes made to the infrastructure

To assist with System Availability, Performance and Monitoring
• Ensuring the correct metrics are being monitored for system availability
• Ensure the overall health and performance of production environment

To ensure information security and regulatory compliance
• Manage server security remediation activities which will include conducting vulnerability scans and patching
• Assist with information security practices, policies, least privilege, RBAC, encryption (GPG, SSL/TLS, PKI)

To assist with Disaster recovery management, procedures & documentation
• Keep DR environment in sync with production environment
• Assist with creation of DR plan and recovery procedures for Linux systems and applications

To perform Linux application administration and support
• Perform administration on DNS Bind and Squid Proxy Servers
• Perform administration on services and applications such as LDAP, SNMP, SMTP, Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, JBOSS and MySQL

Requirements

• Industry Certification: LPIC (Linux Professional Institute Certification)
• Industry Certification: RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer)
• Industry Certification: SUSE CLP (SUSE Certified Linux Professional)
• Extensive System Administration experience with Red Hat Linux and SUSE enterprise Linux (3-5 years)
• Proven history of incident response, diagnostic activities, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Corrective Action Plans, and advanced troubleshooting (3-5 years)
• Experience with RDS databases like MySQL, LDAP, Bind DNS service and Apache Web service (3-5 years)

Desirable:
• Experience working with virtualisation technologies (1-2 years)
• Experience in documenting environment and processes (1-2 years)

Knowledge and Skills

• Understanding of UNIX/Linux Fundamentals and concepts
• Understanding of network and storage principles
• Knowledge of industry security principles and server vulnerability remediation practices
• In-depth knowledge of Redhat and SUSE Enterprise Linux
• Scripting experience, specifically with Ruby/Perl and shell scripting language to automate existing and workloads and routine system admin tasks
• In-depth knowledge of TCP/IP, BIND, LDAP and other common LAMP stack components (Linux OS, DNS, SNMP, SMTP, Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, JBOSS, MySQL)
• Experience with Squid Cache

Desirable:
• IBM hardware knowledge
• Disaster Recovery Planning knowledge
• Exposure to the concepts of "cloud"
• Experience with FTP daemons such as ProFTPD
• Virtual environments knowledge including VMWARE, HyperV and KVM