Unix System Engineer

Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) plays a role in the success of Michigan Medicine by providing clinicians, educators, researchers, students, and staff with technology-related information, products, and support. HITS also provides institutional expertise related to IT strategy, security, infrastructure, and resource management.

About the role

The Unix/Linux and Container Services Team at Michigan Medicine is seeking a Unix Systems Engineer. This role ensures that AIX, Linux, and OpenShift platforms remain secure, reliable, cost-effective, and aligned with organizational goals while supporting critical clinical, research, educational, and administrative applications.

This position is responsible for implementing, managing, and supporting more than 2,000 physical and virtual (VMware) AIX/Linux servers across on-premises and cloud environments. Key responsibilities include supporting IT modernization initiatives such as the OpenShift Container Platform, Ansible Automation Platform, cloud infrastructure, and compute services. This role also contributes to automation, configuration management, and orchestration strategies that improve operational efficiency, scalability, and service reliability.

This position reports to the Manager of the Unix/Linux and Container Services team.

Responsibilities

• Provides senior level expertise on decisions and priorities regarding the enterprise's overall systems architecture, focusing on Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Continuity & Resiliency, Unix/Linux OS, Kubernetes, and Automation.
• Architects and implements solutions requiring integration of multiple platforms, operating systems, and applications across the enterprise.
• Reviews, conducts research, evaluates, advises, and designs on enterprise software and hardware technologies, assessing system options, risks, costs versus benefits, service level requirements, and impact on business processes.
• Partners with business analysts, systems analysts, process managers, and engineers in requirements gathering and reviews.
• Facilitates technical discussions with application, infrastructure, and trusted service provider teams to produce optimal, high-level conceptual designs for projects.
• Defines and discerns key aspects of complex problems, developing integrated solutions within a broad business context.
• Researches and maintains knowledge in emerging technologies, solutions, or service lifecycle and process frameworks to solve business problems.
• Acts autonomously, making decisions that influence business operations.
• Facilitates the establishment and implementation of standards and guidelines that guide the design of technology solutions.
• Develops and maintains technical architecture artifacts for integration and implementation of changes to technical standards, proposing changes in process, policy, and standards as needed.
• Participates in, and may lead, Capacity Management discussions to determine scalable models considering business and service level requirements.
• Provides technical guidance to project teams and may take on the role of Project Leader for special enterprise-wide assignments.
• May coach or mentor junior technical staff.
• Performs operational duties to support Unix/Linux, Kubernetes, and Automation hosting environments, including trouble tickets, customer service requests, and on-call rotation.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Senior Qualifications:
  • 5 or more years of experience in engineering support of large, complex, highly available UNIX/Linux (AIX, RHEL, Ubuntu) architectures.
  • 5 or more years of experience in a related role requiring customer service, organization, prioritization, and troubleshooting to design services and workflows in an enterprise architecture.
• Intermediate Qualifications:
  • 3-5 years of experience in engineering support of large, complex, highly available UNIX/Linux (AIX, RHEL, Ubuntu) architectures.
  • 3-5 years of experience in a related role requiring customer service, organization, prioritization, and troubleshooting to design services and workflows in an enterprise architecture.

Desired Qualifications

• Expert knowledge of Orchestration and Containerization technologies.
• Expert knowledge installing, configuring, and managing configuration products such as Ansible Automation Platform (AAP).
• Strong experience with Cloud architecture/deployments.
• Certification on cloud solutions (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Skills and knowledge to meet the challenges of modern infrastructure, platforms, tools, and concepts at scale with velocity.
• High-level understanding of organization's business and industry requirements.
• Experience deploying and troubleshooting high-performance Linux or AIX systems.
• Demonstrated strong organizational and personal skills.
• Ability to follow-up and direct activities of other employees when not in a direct supervisory role.
• Ability to recognize problems and escalate to appropriate levels of management.
• Proven experience with vendor management.
• Ability to create and refine request for pricing and service level agreement documents.
• Experience with IBM HMC/NIM or Linux AutoYaST and kickstart build processes.
• Advanced scripting skills in ksh/Bash or Python.
• Hands-on experience with performance tuning and analysis on Intel/AMD-based platforms.
• Strong security awareness.
• Experience with networking technologies, particularly as they pertain to managing AIX or Linux systems and applications.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, and organizational skills with the ability to interact effectively at all levels within the organization.
• Experience leading projects and teams.
• Willingness to participate in on-call rotation.

Schedule

• Hybrid position; may require working during non-business hours and on weekends.
• On-call rotation is required for this position.

Benefits

We offer a benefits package that includes comprehensive training and career development opportunities, generous retirement savings plans, ample paid time off, and a wealth of family care support. Learn more about our benefits.