Senior Platform Lead - Linux Scientific Workstations

King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz University Hospital; Saudi Arabia; On-site; SAR 400,000 - 700,000; Full time

Job summary

KAUST seeks a Research User Computing Platforms Lead to architect, provision, automate, and secure its Linux scientific workstation fleet, with governance for Windows and macOS endpoints. You will guide platform strategy, lifecycle, and reliability for faculty and researchers across teaching and labs.

You will drive security baselines, IAM integration, and performance optimization while mentoring a multi-OS engineering team in a high-performance research environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• Master’s degree in a relevant technical or management discipline (preferred).
• RHCE/LPIC or similar certs for configuration-management.
• Networking or security certs such as CCNA/Aruba; ITIL Foundation or higher; CISSP/CISM/CompTIA Security+ (preferred).
• Extensive Linux systems, infrastructure, endpoint engineering, or platform engineering experience with large-scale ownership.

Responsibilities

• Set the architecture and technical direction for KAUST’s Linux scientific workstation fleet, including configuration management, provisioning, inventory, patching, access control, security, and lifecycle management.
• Establish infrastructure-as-code, GitOps, automation, and engineering standards for the Linux platform team, and provide direction for Windows and macOS endpoints.
• Lead build-vs-buy discussions for provisioning, configuration management, secrets management, observability, and fleet operations.
• Own design and improvement of physical and remote scientific workstation platforms with secure, high-performance access.
• Oversee platform operations: provisioning, patch orchestration, inventory, drift detection, observability, reliability, and service continuity.
• Own security and compliance posture of the workstation fleet (host hardening, audit logging, baselines aligned with NIST 800-171/CIS).
• Define hardware standards, refresh cycles, model validation, firmware/BIOS automation, lifecycle planning balancing research needs and budget.
• Mentor and develop the Linux workstation platform team across Windows/macOS engineers.
• Serve as senior escalation point for platform, provisioning, access-control, hardware, and cross-platform issues.
• Collaborate with faculty, researchers, students, vendors, and IT teams to translate needs into sustainable platform capabilities.
• Partner with network, IAM, storage, and advanced computing teams to deliver integrated, secure services.
• Provide updates to senior IT leadership on platform direction, risk, investments, and improvements.
• Perform other tasks within the field as assigned.

Skills

Linux systems

Infrastructure as code

GitOps

Configuration management

Endpoint engineering

Security/compliance

Leadership

Stakeholder collaboration

Puppet

Ansible

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

RHCE

LPIC

CCNA/Aruba

ITIL Foundation

Tools

Puppet

Ansible

Job description

KAUST seeks a Research User Computing Platforms Lead to architect, provision, automate, and secure its Linux scientific workstation fleet, with governance for Windows and macOS endpoints. You will guide platform strategy, lifecycle, and reliability for faculty and researchers across teaching and labs.

You will drive security baselines, IAM integration, and performance optimization while mentoring a multi-OS engineering team in a high-performance research environment.