Senior IT Systems Administrator (Linux Admin)

chaosindustries; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

CHAOS Industries in the United States is seeking a Senior IT Systems Administrator with deep Linux expertise to design, build, secure, and operate our Linux infrastructure.

You will lead, mentor, and own platform standards, oversee patching, monitoring, and DR planning, and collaborate with cybersecurity, service desk, and engineering teams to keep uptime in a defense environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent and 7+ years of Linux administration.
• Experience with Red Hat, Debian family Linux distributions.
• Strong automation, security, and disaster recovery skills.

Responsibilities

• Architect, administer, and maintain Linux server environments (physical, virtual, cloud).
• Design and maintain automation using Ansible, Shell, and Python.
• Harden server images to DISA STIG and CIS benchmarks.
• Lead incident response and perform root-cause analysis.
• Mentor junior staff and drive infrastructure initiatives.

Skills

Linux expertise

Automation & Scripting

Security & Compliance

Mentoring & leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT/CS or related field

Tools

Ansible

Python

Shell scripting

Active Directory

LDAP / Kerberos / SSSD

Azure

AWS

Job description

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage-domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

Role Overview:

CHAOS Industries is looking for a Senior IT Systems Administrator with deep Linux expertise to design, build, secure, and operate the Linux infrastructure our engineering and program teams depend on. You will keep servers, services, and cloud workloads reliable, patched, and compliant in a defense environment where uptime and data protection are both non-negotiable. As a senior member of the IT organization, you will act as a technical lead for Linux systems engineering: setting standards, owning the hardest problems, and mentoring teammates, while partnering with cybersecurity, service desk, engineering, and program teams.

Team mandate:

keep the Linux platforms running reliably, securely, and predictably, and automate everything repeatable so the team can spend its time on improvements. You will be the escalation point for complex systems issues and a trusted advisor on infrastructure decisions.

Ownership:

technical ownership of the Linux server environment, including architecture, configuration management, patching, monitoring, backup and recovery, and hardening, plus leadership of infrastructure projects such as platform migrations, new site standups, and environment consolidations as the company grows.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, administer, and maintain Linux server environments (physical, virtual, and cloud), including provisioning, configuration, patching, monitoring, and lifecycle management across Red Hat-family and Debian-family distributions.
• Design and maintain automation and configuration management using Ansible, shell, and Python to standardize builds, enforce configuration, and streamline patching, reporting, and routine administration.
• Build and maintain hardened, standardized server images and templates aligned to security baselines such as DISA STIG and CIS benchmarks, including SELinux, auditd, and FIPS-validated cryptography where required.
• Manage Linux storage and networking, including LVM, file systems, NFS, DNS, firewalls, and system tuning for performance and capacity.
• Integrate Linux systems with enterprise identity services (Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, SSSD) and enforce SSH key management, sudo policy, MFA, and privileged access controls.
• Deploy and manage Linux workloads in virtualized and cloud environments, including Azure and AWS virtual machines, and support containerized workloads where applicable.
• Serve as technical lead and final escalation point for complex incidents; perform root-cause analysis and drive permanent fixes.
• Mentor and coach junior systems administrators and service desk staff, and set technical standards, best practices, and peer review for the team.
• Lead infrastructure projects from planning through delivery, including platform migrations, site buildouts, and the integration of newly acquired environments.
• Own backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity design for Linux systems, including regular restore testing and recovery objectives.
• Monitor system health, logs, and performance with centralized monitoring and logging tools; remediate vulnerabilities in partnership with cybersecurity.
• Support compliance requirements (such as CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, and FedRAMP) by maintaining configuration documentation, logs, and access reviews, and providing evidence for audits.
• Review technical designs and changes, follow the change control process, and communicate maintenance windows and impacts to stakeholders.
• Evaluate and recommend tools and technologies, and contribute to the infrastructure roadmap, capacity planning, and budget inputs.
• Create and maintain system documentation, runbooks, and architecture diagrams.
• Participate in an on‑call rotation and occasional after‑hours maintenance windows for critical systems.

Travel: minimal, up to roughly 10% (occasional trips to company offices and new sites).

Physical demands: primarily sedentary work at a computer; occasional lifting of equipment up to 25 lbs and work in server or network rooms.

Minimum Requirements:

• Minimum education: Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or another related field or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of progressive experience administering enterprise Linux server environments (such as RHEL, Rocky, CentOS, Ubunt