Senior Linux Administrator (RHEL, Ansible, 24/7 Shifts)

About the role

An experienced Senior Linux Administrator is sought to manage, maintain and optimise enterprise Linux infrastructure supporting business-critical telecommunications services. The role centres on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) administration, L2 operational support, OS upgrades, patching, security compliance, high availability and automation with Ansible and shell scripting. It involves troubleshooting complex production issues, ensuring service availability and working in a 24/7 rotational shift environment.

Key responsibilities

• Administer, configure, monitor and optimise RHEL 7/8/9 environments for stability, performance and availability.
• Perform OS installation, upgrades, package management, repository configuration and post-upgrade validation.
• Run scheduled and emergency patching, manage vulnerabilities via CVE/RHSA advisories and maintain patch compliance through Red Hat Satellite.
• Manage Red Hat Pacemaker/PCS clusters, resources, fencing, failover and high availability.
• Manage LVM, filesystems, storage, mount points and capacity expansion.
• Manage users, groups, permissions, ACLs, sudo policies, SELinux, SSH hardening and access reviews.
• Configure networking, IP addressing, routing, DNS and Squid Proxy, coordinating with network teams.
• Develop and maintain Ansible playbooks, inventories, roles and shell scripts for automation.
• Perform incident triage, log analysis, root-cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Support server commissioning, bare-metal provisioning, RAID, firmware, iDRAC/iLO, Kickstart/PXE and VMware vSphere.
• Execute approved changes with implementation and rollback plans, coordinate maintenance windows and validate changes.
• Maintain technical documentation, inventories, patching records, audit evidence and runbooks.
• Support ManageIQ workflows and Linux-level troubleshooting across OpenShift, OpenStack, SAN and backup environments.
• Work 24/7 rotational shifts, weekends and on-call support to meet SLAs.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related field.
• 7+ years of hands-on Linux administration in an enterprise or telecommunications environment, including L2+ support and production operations.
• Expert RHEL 7/8/9 administration, systemd, networking, LVM, OS upgrades and package management.
• Strong experience with Red Hat Satellite, patching, vulnerability remediation and security compliance.
• Experience with Pacemaker/PCS clustering, high availability, failover and GFS environments.
• Knowledge of VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter, RAID, firmware and hardware management tools.
• Strong Linux security hardening, SELinux, SSH, CVE remediation, access management and audit requirements.
• Working knowledge of OpenShift, OpenStack, SAN, backup/recovery, ManageIQ, Splunk and OSQuery.
• Preferred: RHCSA, RHCE or VMware VCP certification.

Required skills

• RHEL 7/8/9 administration and troubleshooting
• Red Hat Satellite and OS patching
• Ansible, Ansible Automation Tower and shell scripting
• Pacemaker/PCS clustering and high availability
• VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter
• Splunk and OSQuery monitoring