Join GDT and be part of a dynamic team where innovation meets excellence! At GDT, our employees are the cornerstone of our success. GDT offers a people-first culture focused on inclusivity, growth, and innovation. Employees have access to career development opportunities, cutting-edge technology, and a collaborative environment. Employees are empowered to make a meaningful impact and are recognized for their contributions. As a global IT services company, we prioritize attracting, empowering, and retaining top-tier talent dedicated to delivering exceptional results.
GDT Managed Services is hiring a Senior Linux Automation Engineer to own and expand the Linux operations and automation practice for our enterprise managed services customers. You will operate multitenant Linux environments (Oracle Linux, RHEL, and similar) across AWS and on-prem data centers, and you will build the playbooks, pipelines, and runbooks that make patching, upgrades, hardening, and configuration enforcement repeatable and auditable. This is a hands-on engineering role with customer exposure. You will serve as the Linux escalation point for multiple enterprise customer accounts, and you will turn one-off administrative work into automation that lowers our cost to serve.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain Ansible roles and playbooks (AWX / Ansible Automation Platform) for patching, in-place OS upgrades (for example, Leapp-based OEL 7 to 8 to 9), configuration baselines, and compliance remediation.
- Run steady-state security and minor patching cycles on ring-based schedules (Dev, Test, UAT, Prod). That includes pre-patch snapshots and backups, application-tier quiesce and startup sequencing, post-patch health validation, and monthly compliance reporting.
- Operate and extend endpoint management and patch compliance with HCL BigFix, including relays, fixlets, baselines, and third-party patch content for Linux and Windows. Support customers moving off legacy tools such as SCCM.
- Apply Salt (or Puppet as a comparable alternative) for configuration distribution and state enforcement where it is the better fit for a customer or workload.
- Perform fleet-wide security and drift assessments (SSH hardening, password policy, host firewalls, repository health, patch debt) and deliver prioritized remediation plans.
- Administer and troubleshoot Linux in AWS (EC2, EBS, AMI and snapshot workflows, IAM, VPC) and VMware/VxRail environments, including right-sizing, memory and HugePages tuning, and storage and NFS hygiene.
- Integrate Linux hosts with identity (Active Directory, AWS IAM), monitoring (LogicMonitor), and ITSM (ServiceNow, Jira) tooling. Use Jira change control, CAB reviews, and documented rollback plans.
- Write clean, version-controlled automation in Git, with peer review and reusable, customer-agnostic modules that can be rolled out across multiple tenants.
- Author and maintain SOPs, runbooks, architecture diagrams, and knowledge-transfer material. Lead KT sessions for the broader MS engineering team.
- Be available for escalations on Linux incidents and participate in customer governance calls, change windows, and on-call rotation [confirm on-call expectations].
- Mentor lower-level engineers on Linux and automation practices.
- Other duties as assigned.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years in Linux systems engineering or administration, including 3+ years building automation in an MSP or enterprise environment.
- Expert-level administration of RHEL / Oracle Linux / CentOS-family systems, including YUM/DNF repository management, kernel and UEK updates, SELinux, and systemd.
- Production experience with Ansible (roles, inventories, vault, AWX/AAP) automating patching and upgrades at scale.
- Hands-on experience with Ansible plus at least one agent-based configuration or endpoint management platform (Salt, Puppet, or BigFix), and willingness to become proficient in Salt and BigFix.
- Strong scripting skills in Bash and Python; working knowledge of PowerShell for AWS and Windows tasks.
- Working knowledge of AWS (EC2, EBS, IAM, networking) and/or Azure, with the ability to automate cloud tasks through CLI or API.
- Experience with change control, ITIL practices, and documenting implementation, test, and rollback plans.
- Strong written and verbal communication. You can explain technical risk and remediation plans to both engineers and customer executives.
Preferred Qualifications
- HCL BigFix Platform certification or demonstrated administration experience (patching, relays, multi-tenant or multi-customer operations).
- SaltStack or Puppet experience in high-scale environments.
- Oracle Linux and Oracle E-Business Suite / database infrastructure experience, including HugePages and SGA tuning.
- VMware vSphere / Nutanix experience.
- Monitoring and observability integration (LogicMonitor, Splunk, ELK) and API or webhook integration.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines.
Certifications The following certifications are desired but not required.
- Red Hat RHCSA / RHCE, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation
- AWS SysOps Administrator Associate, AWS DevOps Engineer Professional, or Azure Administrator
- HCL BigFix certification; Oracle Linux certification
- VMware VCP; ITIL 4 Foundation
Education Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, or a related field preferred. Equivalent experience considered. Working Conditions
GDT IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. Applicants and employees are considered for positions and are evaluated without regard to mental or physical disability, race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, genetic information, military or veteran status, sex, marital status, gender identity or any other protected Federal, State/Province or Local status unrelated to the performance of the work involved.