Senior Specialist, Linux Platform Engineer

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 3,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Rakuten Symphony is seeking a Senior Linux Platform Engineer in Bangalore, India, to own and operate Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments, IPA/FreeIPA identity services, IPA Vault secrets, and cloud-native Kubernetes platforms for production workloads.

The role emphasizes automation, patching, security hardening, incident response, and 24x7 support, with strong scripting skills in Bash/Ansible/Python and hands-on experience across Linux distributions.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on Linux administration in enterprise production environments.
• Strong experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration, patching, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and system hardening.
• Working knowledge of multiple Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, or Oracle Linux.
• Hands-on experience with IPA/FreeIPA identity management, Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, certificates, sudo rules, and host enrollment.
• Practical understanding of IPA Vault or equivalent secrets management for passwords, keys, and certificates.
• Experience administering Kubernetes clusters, workloads, RBAC, secrets, storage, networking, and troubleshooting application or infrastructure issues.

Responsibilities

• Administer, maintain, patch, upgrade, and troubleshoot Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux server environments.
• Manage Linux services, storage, networking, LVM, filesystems, systemd, kernel parameters, SSH, DNS, NTP, and performance tuning.
• Implement Linux security hardening, access controls, patch compliance, vulnerability remediation, and audit readiness.
• Configure and support IPA/FreeIPA services including users, groups, hosts, HBAC rules, sudo rules, Kerberos, LDAP, certificates, and access policies.
• Support IPA Vault usage for secure storage, retrieval, sharing, and lifecycle management of secrets, keys, passwords, and certificates.
• Administer Kubernetes environments including cluster health, namespaces, workloads, RBAC, secrets, config maps, storage, networking, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
• Automate repetitive administration tasks using shell scripting, Ansible, Python, or equivalent automation tools.
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, change implementation, operational documentation, and 24x7 support as required.

Skills

RHEL administration

Kubernetes

IPA/FreeIPA

IPA Vault

Automation

Shell/Ansible/Python

Security hardening

Networking/TCP/IP

RBAC and IAM

Troubleshooting

Tools

Red Hat Satellite

OpenShift

HashiCorp Vault

Helm

GitOps

CI/CD pipelines

Prometheus/Grafana

Job description

Job Description:

Job Title: Senior Linux Platform Engineer – Red Hat, IPA Vault and Kubernetes Department: Security Engineering Reports To: Manager Location: Bangalore, India About the Team/Department: The Infrastructure and Security Engineering team is responsible for building, securing, automating, and supporting enterprise Linux platforms and cloud-native infrastructure. The team manages Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions, identity and access services using IPA/FreeIPA, secrets and certificate management through IPA Vault, and Kubernetes-based platforms supporting production workloads.

Position Summary

We are looking for an experienced Linux Platform Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, all major Linux distributions, IPA/FreeIPA, IPA Vault, and Kubernetes. The resource will be responsible for Linux platform administration, identity and access integration, secrets and certificate lifecycle support, automation, troubleshooting, hardening, and operational support for business-critical infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer, maintain, patch, upgrade, and troubleshoot Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux server environments.
• Manage Linux services, storage, networking, LVM, filesystems, systemd, kernel parameters, SSH, DNS, NTP, and performance tuning.
• Implement Linux security hardening, access controls, patch compliance, vulnerability remediation, and audit readiness.
• Configure and support IPA/FreeIPA services including users, groups, hosts, HBAC rules, sudo rules, Kerberos, LDAP, certificates, and access policies.
• Support IPA Vault usage for secure storage, retrieval, sharing, and lifecycle management of secrets, keys, passwords, and certificates.
• Administer Kubernetes environments including cluster health, namespaces, workloads, RBAC, secrets, config maps, storage, networking, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
• Automate repetitive administration tasks using shell scripting, Ansible, Python, or equivalent automation tools.
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, change implementation, operational documentation, and 24x7 support as required.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on Linux administration experience in enterprise production environments.
• Strong experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration, patching, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and system hardening.
• Working knowledge of multiple Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, or Oracle Linux.
• Hands-on experience with IPA/FreeIPA identity management, Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, certificates, sudo rules, and host enrollment.
• Practical understanding of IPA Vault or equivalent secrets management for passwords, keys, and certificates.
• Experience administering Kubernetes clusters, workloads, RBAC, secrets, storage, networking, and troubleshooting application or infrastructure issues.
• Strong scripting and automation skills using Bash, Ansible, Python, or similar tools.
• Good understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, SSH, TLS certificates, firewalls, load balancers, monitoring, logging, and ITIL/ITSM processes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or equivalent certification.
• Experience with Red Hat Satellite, OpenShift, HashiCorp Vault, Helm, container runtimes, CI/CD pipelines, and GitOps practices.
• Experience integrating Linux platforms with enterprise IAM, PAM, LDAP, SSO, certificate authorities, and centralized logging solutions.
• Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Loki, or similar platforms.
• Experience working in cloud or hybrid infrastructure environments such as AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, or OpenStack.

Core Competencies

• Deep technical troubleshooting and analytical problem-solving across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linux services, Kubernetes platforms, and identity infrastructure.
• Strong ownership mindset for production stability, security compliance, platform availability, and operational excellence.
• Hands‑on execution capability with system administration, incident response, root cause analysis, patching, hardening, upgrades, and change implementation.
• Security‑first approach to access management, secrets handling, certificate lifecycle management, privileged access, and audit readiness.
• Automation and standardization mindset with ability to reduce manual effort using scripting, Ansible, repeatable runbooks, and reusable operational procedures.
• Strong understanding of identity, authentication, authorization, Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, TLS, RBAC, and Linux access control models.
• Cloud‑native operational awareness for Kubernetes workloads, namespaces, secrets, storage, networking, monitoring, and platform resilience.
• Ability to document architecture standards, SOPs, troubleshooting guides, change plans, and production support runbooks clearly.
• Effective communication and collaboration with security, infrastructure, application, vendor, operations, and leadership stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently, prioritize incidents and service requests, manage multiple technical priorities, and support high‑pressure production situations.
• Continuous improvement mindset aligned with automation, reliability engineering, secure‑by‑design practices, cost optimization, and service quality improvement.
• Customer‑oriented approach with focus on responsiveness, clear updates, service reliability, and stakeholder satisfaction.

RAKUTEN SHUGI PRINCIPLES:

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviours that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

• Always improve, always advance. Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen.
• Be passionately professional. Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best.
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika. Use the Rakuten Cycle to success in unknown territory.
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to see their customers smile.
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team.

Rakuten Symphony is reimagining telecom, changing supply chain norms and disrupting outmoded thinking that threatens the industry’s pursuit of rapid innovation and growth. Based on proven modern infrastructure practices, its open interface platforms make it possible to launch and operate advanced mobile services in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional approaches, with no compromise to network quality or security. Rakuten Symphony has operations in Japan, the United States, Singapore, India, South Korea, Europe, and the Middle East Africa region. For more information, visit: https://symphony.rakuten.com Building on the technology Rakuten used to launch Japan’s newest mobile network, we are taking our mobile offering global. To support our ambitions to provide an innovative cloud-native telco platform for our customers, Rakuten Symphony is looking to recruit and develop top talent from around the globe. We are looking for individuals to join our team across all functional areas of our business – from sales to engineering, support functions to product development. Let’s build the future of mobile telecommunications together!