Infrastructure Engineer

RAPIDFORT; United States; On-site; USD 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Paid time off and company holidays

Paid sick leave

Company-provided equipment

Professional development and growth

Job summary

RapidFort is seeking an Infrastructure Engineer to build, automate, and run our on-prem and data center estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. This hands-on role emphasizes Linux systems engineering and automation with significant exposure to hardware, storage, and networking.

You will patch, script, and troubleshoot in a real hardware environment while developing runbooks and documentation. Expect to work with senior engineers, participate in on-call rotations, and grow into a role that balances

Qualifications

• 2–4 years of hands-on experience administering Linux in a production environment.
• Comfort with the Linux command line for diagnosing services and filesystems without a runbook.
• Scripting ability in Bash and enough Python to read and modify automation scripts.
• Exposure to configuration management (Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or similar) and interest in deeper learning.
• Basic networking fundamentals: IP addressing, VLANs, DNS, DHCP, and troubleshooting connectivity.
• Willingness to perform physical data center work (racking, cabling, site visits).
• Documentation-minded work habits and judgment about escalations.

Responsibilities

• Build, configure, and harden Linux systems (RHEL/Rocky and Ubuntu).
• Write and extend automation in Bash and Python for provisioning, remediation, and reporting.
• Contribute to Ansible content and maintain roles and playbooks.
• Execute patching and OS life cycle work with testing and rollout planning.
• Troubleshoot Linux issues and escalate when needed.
• Identify repetitive manual tasks and propose automation improvements.
• Perform server hardware tasks: staging, racking, cabling, firmware updates, and decommissioning.
• Handle first-line hardware diagnosis and vendor support/RMA tracking.
• Carry out storage tasks on SAN/NAS platforms and monitor capacity.
• Perform hypervisor tasks: VM provisioning, host patching, and cluster health checks.
• Make data center network changes (VLANs, switches, DNS, DHCP) and troubleshoot connectivity.
• Maintain asset, IPAM, rack, and topology records.

Skills

Linux

Bash scripting

Python

Networking basics

On-call experience

Documentation

Tools

Ansible

Puppet

Chef

RHCSA

Linux+

CCNA

Job description

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Department: Information Technology — Infrastructure Engineering

INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER — Linux & Data Center

Reports To: Infrastructure Engineering Manager
Employment Type: Full-time
Experience Level: 2–4 years
Base Salary: $100,000–$125,000 USD annually
Travel: Periodic data center and colocation site visits
On-Call: Participates in a shared infrastructure on-call rotation, with senior escalation support
Eligibility: U.S. citizenship required
On-site requirement: This role has hands‑on data center responsibility and cannot be performed fully remote.

About Rapidfort

RapidFort is a cybersecurity company focused on helping organizations secure and optimize their software supply chain and containerized environments. Our platform helps teams reduce software vulnerabilities and attack surface while improving the security and efficiency of modern cloud-native applications.

We work with commercial enterprises and public-sector organizations operating in highly regulated and security-sensitive environments.

About The Role

RapidFort Inc. runs its core systems on infrastructure we own and operate. We are looking for an Infrastructure Engineer to help build, automate, and run that estate alongside our senior engineers.

This is a hands‑on role with a deliberate weighting: roughly 70% Linux systems engineering and automation, 30% data center hardware, storage, and network. Most of your week is spent in the Linux environment — building, patching, scripting, and troubleshooting — and a real part of it is spent with your hands on physical infrastructure.

This is a growth role, and we mean that concretely. You will work to standards set by our Infrastructure Engineering Manager and Lead Infrastructure Engineer, with design review and mentorship built into how the team operates. You are not expected to arrive with deep storage or network architecture experience. You are expected to be strong on Linux, genuinely comfortable scripting, and willing to learn the physical side properly rather than treating it as someone else’s job.

We are being specific about the split because it shapes the day. If you want a pure cloud or pure software role, this is not it. If you want to understand infrastructure from the rack up while doing serious automation work, it is a good place to spend a few years.

What You’ll Do

• Build, configure, and harden Linux systems (RHEL/Rocky and Ubuntu) against our defined baselines and images.
• Write and extend automation in Bash and Python for provisioning, remediation, routine reporting, and evidence collection.
• Contribute to our Ansible content — write and maintain roles and playbooks under the team's established standards.
• Execute patching and OS life cycle work: test, stage, roll out, track exceptions, and flag end‑of‑life systems.
• Troubleshoot Linux issues across CPU, memory, I/O, file system, and systemd, escalating when a problem exceeds your depth.
• Look for repetitive manual work on the team and propose automation for it.

• Execute server hardware tasks: staging and burn‑in, racking, cabling, firmware and BIOS updates, out‑of‑band management, and decommissioning.
• Perform first‑line hardware diagnosis and open and track vendor support and RMA cases.
• Carry out day‑to‑day storage tasks on our SAN/NAS platforms — provisioning, presentation, and capacity monitoring.
• Perform routine hypervisor work: VM provisioning from templates, host patching, and cluster health checks.
• Make data center network changes to established standards — VLANs, switch ports, DNS, DHCP — and troubleshoot connectivity faults.
• Keep asset, IPAM, rack, and topology records accurate. This matters more than it sounds like it does.

• Participate in the infrastructure on‑call rotation with senior escalation available.
• Execute planned changes during maintenance windows, including writing the change plan and rollback steps.
• Contribute to postmortems and own the remediation items assigned to you.
• Write and improve runbooks and documentation as you learn the environment.

Required

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

• 2–4 years of hands‑on experience administering Linux in a production environment.
• Real comfort on the Linux command line — you can diagnose a failing service or a full filesystem without a runbook.
• Working scripting ability in Bash, and enough Python to read, modify, and write straightforward automation.
• Exposure to configuration management (Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or similar) and an interest in going deeper.
• Basic networking fundamentals: IP addressing and sub-netting, VLANs, DNS and DHCP, and how to trace a connectivity problem.
• Willingness to do physical work in a data center — racking, cabling, and site visits are part of the job, not an occasional exception.
• Careful, documentation‑minded working habits and sound judgment about when to elevate.

Nice to Have

• Virtualization exposure (LXC, VMware, Hyper‑V, Proxmox, or KVM).
• Enterprise storage exposure — SAN or NAS provisioning, or an understanding of multipathing.
• Any production on‑call experience under a formal change and incident process.
• Linux or networking certification (RHCSA, Linux+, CCNA) or active progress toward one.
• Exposure to an environment operating under ISO 27001 or SOC 2 Type 2.
• Enough cloud familiarity to hand work off cleanly to our Cloud Operations team — depth is not required.

What Success Looks Like

By 90 days — you can build, patch, and hand over a standard system independently, you know your way around the racks, and you are shadowing on‑call.

By six months — you are taking on‑call shifts and handling routine incidents without escalating, and you have automated at least one task the team was doing by hand.

By twelve months — you own a subsystem end to end, your changes go through review without rework, and you are the person a newer engineer asks first.

WHERE THIS LEADS

Our infrastructure team has a defined senior path. The Lead Infrastructure Engineer role above this one carries technical design authority and deputizes for the manager, and the skills it requires are exactly the ones this role develops: deep Linux automation, genuine hardware and network competence, and the judgment to know which decisions are yours. We would rather grow that person than hire them.

WHY THIS ROLE

• Genuine ownership. We run our own infrastructure. Decisions about how it is built are made here, not by a provider.
• Breadth you cannot get in a cloud‑only role. You will learn the stack from power and cabling up through automation, which is increasingly rare and hard to pick up later.
• Automation is the mandate, not a side project. Reducing manual work is part of how this role is measured, so you will not be told to stop scripting and go close tickets.
• Real mentorship. Design review and senior escalation are built into the team's operating model, not dependent on someone finding time.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $100,000–$125,000 USD annually, depending on experience and qualifications
• Annual performance‑based bonus
• Equity: Stock options in RapidFort
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Paid time off and company holidays
• Paid sick leave
• Company‑provided equipment
• Professional development and growth opportunities

RapidFort is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.