Systems Engineer - Linux

WGU; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 74,000 - 111,000; Full time

Job summary

Western Governors University is seeking a Systems Engineer - Linux to design, support, and improve the enterprise Linux infrastructure powering our online education platform.

You will manage RHEL environments across on‑premises and cloud, implement automation with Ansible, and collaborate with security, virtualization, and data center teams to ensure availability, security, and performance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 2+ years of Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration in production.
• Experience provisioning and supporting enterprise Linux systems.
• Experience with VMware vSphere virtualization.
• Experience with security standards, patching and automation tooling (Ansible).
• Experience handling confidential or regulated data.

Responsibilities

• Administer and support enterprise RHEL servers across on‑premises and cloud.
• Deploy and maintain standardized RHEL images, templates and automation.
• Monitor Linux infrastructure for health, availability, and security.
• Implement backup strategies and collaborate with owners to meet SLAs.
• Support VMware vSphere environments and storage administration.
• Use Ansible and scripting to automate deployment and patching.
• Work with security to implement OS hardening and vulnerabilities remediation.
• Develop runbooks and technical standards; participate in on‑call rotation.

Skills

Linux administration

VMware vSphere

Ansible automation

Security best practices

Patch management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering or related field

Tools

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

VMware vSphere

Ansible

Job description

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

• Grade: Technical 403

• Pay Range: $73,800.00 - $110,700.00

Job Description

At Western Governors University, technology is foundational to delivering life-changing educational opportunities to students across the country. We're looking for a Systems Engineer - Linux to help design, support, and continuously improve the enterprise Linux infrastructure that powers our mission.

In this role, you'll manage and maintain Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environments across on-premises and cloud platforms, ensuring high availability, security, and operational excellence. You'll work closely with infrastructure, networking, security, cloud, and data center teams to deploy, monitor, automate, and optimize enterprise systems while contributing to modernization initiatives and operational improvements.

This is an excellent opportunity for an engineer who enjoys automation, infrastructure reliability, systems security, and solving complex technical challenges in a collaborative enterprise environment.

This is an in-office position designated to be located in our Salt Lake City, Headquarters.

What You'll Do

• Administer, maintain, and support enterprise Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Deploy, configure, and maintain standardized RHEL images, templates, and automation processes.
• Monitor Linux infrastructure to ensure system health, availability, performance, and security compliance.
• Implement and maintain backup strategies while partnering with application owners to meet service level objectives.
• Support VMware vSphere environments and assist with virtualization and storage administration.
• Configure and maintain storage resources supporting Linux workloads.
• Utilize Ansible and scripting to automate system deployment, configuration management, patching, and operational tasks.
• Partner with Security teams to implement operating system hardening, vulnerability remediation, and enterprise security standards.
• Collaborate with Data Center teams to ensure adequate compute, power, cooling, and connectivity for infrastructure platforms.
• Participate in infrastructure maintenance activities, upgrades, migrations, and troubleshooting efforts, including occasional after-hours maintenance windows.
• Develop and maintain operational documentation, runbooks, knowledge base articles, and technical standards.
• Support enterprise monitoring and alerting platforms to proactively identify and resolve infrastructure issues.
• Contribute to change management activities by documenting implementation plans in accordance with ITIL practices.
• Work closely with systems engineers, network engineers, cloud engineers, and application teams to deliver reliable infrastructure services.
• Participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation supporting mission-critical systems.

What You’ll Bring

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Two (2) years of experience administering Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a production enterprise environment.
• Experience provisioning, configuring, and supporting enterprise Linux systems.
• Experience managing virtualized Linux workloads using VMware vSphere.
• Experience implementing security standards, patching, and configuration management using Ansible or similar automation tools.
• Experience supporting secure environments handling confidential or regulated data.
• Equivalent professional experience may substitute for education requirements (generally one year of experience for one year of education).

Preferred Qualifications

• Linux certifications such as Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat Certified E