Linux Systems Engineer

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, administer, and maintain enterprise Linux environments.
• Develop standardized operating system configurations and hardened baseline builds.
• Perform operating system upgrades, patch management, lifecycle maintenance, and performance optimization.
• Troubleshoot complex operating system, networking, and application issues.

Advanced Network Engineering

• Design and implement advanced routing architectures utilizing Policy-Based Routing (PBR).
• Configure and troubleshoot OSPF and static routing.
• Manage VLANs, LACP, and 802.1Q trunking.
• Work with network namespaces, VRFs, NAT, and firewall policies.
• Analyze and troubleshoot network traffic using tools like tcpdump, Wireshark, iproute2, nftables, iptables.
• Tune Linux Kernel parameters for high-throughput networking, low-latency applications, and VPN gateway performance.
• Optimize TCP/IP stack performance, network buffer sizing, IRQ balancing, CPU affinity, NUMA awareness, and memory management.
• Utilize performance analysis tools including perfsarvmstatiostate, BPF observability tools, systemd performance metrics.
• Design and support secure VPN infrastructures using OpenVPN 2.6+, WireGuard, and IPSec.
• Implement and support site-to-site and remote-access VPNs, hub-and-spoke architectures, and high-availability VPN clusters.
• Implement dynamic routing across VPN overlays.

Linux Kernel Tuning & Performance Optimization

• Tune Linux Kernel parameters for high-throughput networking, low-latency applications, and VPN gateway performance.
• Optimize TCP/IP stack performance, network buffer sizing, IRQ balancing, CPU affinity, NUMA awareness, and memory management.

VPN Engineering

• Design, deploy, and support secure VPN infrastructures using OpenVPN 2.6+, WireGuard, and IPSec.
• Implement and support site-to-site and remote-access VPNs, hub-and-spoke architectures, and high-availability VPN clusters.
• Implement dynamic routing across VPN overlays.
• Troubleshoot encryption, routing, MTU, and performance issues.
• Implement modern cryptographic standards and VPN hardening best practices.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions using SaltStack.
• Create and maintain Salt States, Pillars, Custom modules, and Orchestration workflows.
• Automate system provisioning, configuration deployment, compliance enforcement, and VPN deployments.
• Manage security baseline management.
• Integrate SaltStack with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure monitoring platforms.

Required Qualifications

• Current Top-Secret Clearance with SCI Eligibility.
• Technical Experience: 5+ years of Linux Systems Engineering experience, 3+ years of advanced Linux networking experience, 3+ years of VPN engineering experience, 3+ years of SaltStack administration and automation experience.
• Operating Systems: Strong hands-on experience with Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux.
• Networking Expertise: Demonstrated expertise with Policy-Based Routing (PBR), iproute2, routing tables and policy rules, Linux bridges, bonding and teaming, VLANs, VRFs, network namespaces, dynamic routing protocols, high-availability networking architectures.
• VPN Expertise: Strong practical experience with WireGuard, OpenVPN 2.6+, IPSec, PKI and certificate management, TLS authentication, multi-site VPN topologies, VPN performance tuning.
• Automation & Scripting Experience: With SaltStack, Python, Bash, Git, CI/CD workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting cloud platforms: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure.
• Experience with container technologies: Docker, Kubernetes.
• Experience supporting confidential computing environments.
• Knowledge of CNSA-compliant cryptographic implementations.
• Familiarity with eBPF-based observability and network diagnostics.
• Industry certifications: RHCE, ELCE, CCNP, equivalent advanced certifications.

Desired Skills

• Exceptional troubleshooting and root-cause analysis capabilities.
• Strong documentation and technical writing skills.
• Ability to operate independently in mission-critical environments.
• Experience designing highly available and fault-tolerant systems.
• Security-first mindset with strong infrastructure design principles.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.