Lead Infrastructure Engineer - Linux (hybrid position in either Irving, TX or Charlotte, NC)

About the role

The Lead Infrastructure Engineer for Linux OS Engineering provides technical leadership for enterprise Linux platform engineering, OS image lifecycle, automation, compliance, and modernization initiatives. This role leads the design and delivery of secure, standardized, and auditable RHEL platforms across on-premises, virtualized, container, and public cloud environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex Linux OS Engineering initiatives focused on RHEL platform modernization, image lifecycle management, patch automation, and enterprise-scale OS governance.
• Provide technical leadership for RHEL 8, RHEL 9, and RHEL 10 engineering, including build standards, release readiness, layered product validation, lifecycle documentation, and catalog rationalization.
• Architect and improve automated OS image build pipelines using tools such as Packer, Ansible, GitHub Actions, CI/CD workflows, and GitOps operating patterns.
• Lead engineering work related to self-service in-place upgrades, including RHEL 7 to 8, RHEL 8 to 9, RHEL 9 to 10, and future upgrade path evaluation.
• Drive CIS Benchmark alignment, OpenSCAP-based validation, configuration baseline enforcement, drift detection, remediation automation, and audit-ready evidence generation.
• Partner with security, risk, operations, software delivery, cloud, storage, virtualization, and application teams to ensure Linux platforms are secure, supportable, observable, and consumable at scale.
• Lead automation and modernization efforts for Azure/GCP Linux images, on-prem VM images, OpenShift/Kubernetes base image dependencies, and required layered product integration.
• Improve patch, CVE, and kernel dependency workflows by reducing manual handoffs and improving validation, traceability, and release readiness.
• Define engineering standards, runbooks, release patterns, and operational controls that reduce toil and improve consistency across Linux environments.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, review designs and code, and provide technical direction across multiple Linux workstreams.
• Evaluate and apply observability, analytics, and AI-enabled insights to improve OS build success/failure tracking, upgrade readiness, compliance reporting, and proactive issue detection.
• Lead troubleshooting for complex Linux OS, provisioning, patching, automation, performance, security, storage, and integration issues.

Requirements

• 5+ years of enterprise Linux engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated technical depth in large-scale infrastructure environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including RHEL 8, RHEL 9, and/or RHEL 10.
• Experience designing, building, hardening, and maintaining Linux OS images or golden images.
• Strong automation experience with Ansible, Python, Bash, Git, GitHub, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with OS patching, package management, repositories, Satellite, YUM/DNF, kernel updates, and dependency management.
• Experience implementing or supporting security baselines such as CIS Benchmark, STIG, OpenSCAP, or equivalent compliance frameworks.
• Experience with regulated delivery practices, including change control, evidence collection, audit readiness, traceability, and controlled releases.
• Ability to lead technical design, mentor engineers, and drive cross-functional execution across infrastructure, security, operations, and application teams.

Qualifications

• Experience with Packer-based image creation, immutable infrastructure, image factory patterns, or automated VM image publication.
• Experience with GitOps, infrastructure-as-code, configuration-as-code, and PR-based operational workflows.
• Experience supporting public cloud image lifecycle patterns in Azure and/or GCP.
• Experience with OpenShift, Kubernetes, UBI container images, or container platform enablement.
• Experience with in-place upgrade tooling, Leapp, enterprise OS migration programs, or self-service lifecycle automation.
• Experience with observability platforms such as Grafana, Splunk, Power BI, Red Hat Insights, or similar tooling.
• Experience with enterprise storage, clustering, virtualization, bare-metal provisioning, or hardware certification workflows.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate technical risk, roadmap dependencies, and engineering outcomes into leadership-ready updates.