Senior UNIX System Engineer

Trace Systems; Radford (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Trace Systems in Radford, VA, seeks a Senior UNIX Systems Engineer to support a mixed UNIX environment (RHEL, OEL, Solaris). The role requires a Secret clearance and US citizenship. Responsibilities span deployment, hardening, monitoring, and documentation across multiple customer environments.

The candidate will collaborate with the UNIX team, manage hardware/software upgrades, and ensure security controls while coordinating with stakeholders to meet mission requirements.

Qualifications

• Five or more years' experience as a Unix Systems Administrator or IT Engineer with automation experience.
• Three or more years' patch management experience using security updates (YUM/RPM).
• Three or more years' experience with VLANs, troubleshooting (ifconfig, netstat, ssh, telnet) and hardening with firewalld/iptables.
• Three or more years' experience managing many local users via command line.
• Three or more years' creating and following SOPs for DR and problem resolution.
• Three or more years' configuring DNS, SFTP, SMTP and NTP.

Responsibilities

• Manage, deploy, troubleshoot, and support a mixed UNIX environment (RHEL, OEL, Solaris).
• Collaborate with UNIX team to ensure availability, stability, and performance across customer environments.
• Plan and implement new hardware and software deployments, upgrades, configurations, and integrations.
• Monitor and tune system performance; identify issues before they impact operations.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, SOPs, and operational policies.
• Support lifecycle management of datacenter hardware and vendor equipment, including firmware control.

Skills

Unix Systems Administration

Automation

Patching (YUM/RPM)

Networking basics

Security hardening

Scripting

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent experience

High School Diploma or equivalent

Tools

SELinux

firewalld/iptables

Job description

Overview

Trace Systems

Senior UNIX System Engineer

US-VA-Radford

Radford, Virginia

Job ID: 2026-7343

# of Openings: 1

Responsibilities

Trace Systems is seeking a Senior UNIX Systems Engineer to support and maintain a growing, mixed UNIX environment consisting of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL), and Solaris systems. The project associated with this position is currently in the proposal stage.

• Manage, maintain, deploy, troubleshoot, and support a mixed UNIX environment consisting of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL), and Solaris systems.
• Collaborate with the existing UNIX team to support daily operations and ensure the availability, stability, and performance of enterprise servers across multiple customer environments.
• Plan, coordinate, and implement new hardware and software deployments, upgrades, configurations, and integrations.
• Monitor, analyze, and tune system performance to maintain optimal server operations and identify potential issues before they impact the environment.
• Implement and maintain system hardening standards, security controls, and configuration requirements.
• Monitor and report on overall system security, operational health, capacity, and utilization using established tools.
• Identify system issues, recommend corrective actions, and implement improvements to enhance performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Develop, maintain, and update technical documentation, team instructions, standard operating procedures, and operational policies.
• Support the full lifecycle management of datacenter hardware and vendor equipment, including firmware version control, maintenance planning, and periodic preventive maintenance.
• Evaluate, recommend, demonstrate, and implement new technologies and solutions to expand, modernize, and improve the existing enterprise environment.
• Provide technical recommendations for infrastructure improvements, system upgrades, and hardware and software integrations.
• Collaborate effectively with team members, customers, and stakeholders to communicate technical issues, provide updates, and support mission requirements.

Qualifications

• Active, in-scope US Government issued Secret clearance.
• Due to the nature of the work and contract requirements, US Citizenship is required.
• Required Certifications: Security +
• Experience in Computer Science or IT.
• Computing Environment (CE) Certification (i.e., RedHat) can be waived for 30 days after project join date.
• Five or more years' experience as a Unix Systems Administrator or IT Engineer with experience in automating assigned tasks.
• Three or more years' experience in patch management with understanding how to apply security updates to systems via YUM and RPM.
• Three or more years' experience working in an environment with complex networks while demonstrating experience using VLANs, troubleshooting tools such as ifconfig, netstat, ssh and telnet as well as how to harden a system using firewalld/iptables and hosts.
• Three or more years' experience managing a large pool of local users with the command line.
• Three or more years' experience creating, maintaining, following Standard Operating Procedures for repeatable processes, disaster recovery, and common problem resolution.
• Three or more years' experience configuring and maintaining key services such as DNS, SFTP, SMTP, and NTP.

Desired Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent years of experience.
• Three or more years' experience with SELinux understand the basic and advanced management and configuration of SELinux.
• Experience supporting Cybersecurity patch management and Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG), Security Requirement Guides (SRG), RMF, Security Control Assessor-Validator (SCA-V), and Cyber Operational Readiness Assessments (CORA).
• Experience deploying large scale HW and SW systems enhancements and/or upgrades for an organization with widely distributed geographic sites.
• Experience with current and emerging network and infrastructure management technologies and business practices.

Education:

• High School Diploma or equivalent.

Trace Systems:

Trace Systems Inc. was founded to support and defend our nation's security interests at home and abroadwhenever and wherever. We provide enterprise IT, engineering, full life-cycle communications, cybersecurity, cloud and virtualization services and solutions to the United States Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

Trace Systems is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified candidates will be considered without regard to legally protected characteristics.