UNIX/Linux/Solaris Engineer, Hosting and Storage Services

Northramp

Reston (VA)

On-site

USD 110,000 - 140,000

Full time

9 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Employee Bonus Programs

Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance

401(k) Retirement Plan

Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D

Short-Term and Long-Term Disability

Paid Time Off

Paid Parental Leave

Training and Professional Development

Remote Work Opportunities

Wellness Resources

Job summary

Northramp, LLC in Reston, VA seeks an experienced Solaris and Red Hat systems administrator to manage large-scale UNIX estates across virtualized and hardware platforms.

You will own patching with ABEs, drive automation with Ansible or Puppet, monitor health with SL1/Tenable/Tripwire/Splunk, and coordinate with CAB, ServiceNow, and NOC teams to ensure secure, reliable operations.

Qualifications

5+ years administering Oracle Solaris (Zones and LDOMs) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux at scale.
Experience patching, ABEs, and vendor bundle planning.
Hands-on Puppet and Ansible UNIX automation and shell scripting.
Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust.
Familiarity with VMware coordination with platform teams.

Responsibilities

Operate and administer Solaris and Red Hat estates.
Patch management and change execution with standard cycles.
Lead transition to Ansible/Puppet playbooks and write automation runbooks.
Configure monitoring and respond to security events with SL1, Tenable, Tripwire, and Splunk.
Collaborate with customers, cybersecurity teams, and operations groups.

Skills

Solaris administration

RHEL administration

VMware management

Automation: Ansible

Automation: Puppet

Scripting: bash & ksh

Security monitoring

Change management

On-call rotations

Documentation

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Ansible

Puppet

VMware

ServiceNow

SL1

Tenable

Tripwire

Splunk

Job description

Responsibilities

Operations and Administration

Operates and administers the Solaris and Red Hat estates.

Solaris: administers Zones and Logical Domains (LDOMs), manages the operating system lifecycle, patching, and hardware, including Oracle platforms such as T-series where applicable.

Red Hat: administers Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems virtualized on VMware, in partnership with the Windows and VMware team.

Patching and Change Execution

Drives Solaris patching with Alternate Boot Environments (ABEs): builds, patches, and reboots into an ABE on standard cycles (the third Friday for non-production, the fourth Friday for production), with rapid rollback when needed.

Adapts to Oracle’s revised patch cadence of security bundles approximately every 6 weeks, with potential interim bundles, and plans out-of-band updates when vulnerability severity requires them.

Maintains Red Hat patching through Puppet, so that customer-managed servers also receive monthly operating system updates.

Automation and Tool Transitions

Leads the transition off Oracle Ops Center (end of life, with the waiver ending December 31) to Ansible (preferred) or Puppet playbooks for Solaris patch automation, and writes the playbooks, modules, and operational runbooks for the new process.

Supports the upgrade from Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 13.5 to 24 AI and keeps monitoring and administration workflows reliable during and after the migration.

Monitoring and Security Operations

Configures and consumes ScienceLogic SL1 monitoring for operating system and hardware health (CPU, memory, and filesystems) and notifications, and coordinates platform configuration with the operations management group (DCOB) as needed.

Triages security alerts from Tenable scans and the follow-on tickets in Tripwire (file integrity) and Splunk (log-based anomalies such as SSH attempts), enforces host-level firewalls, and raises network blocks when needed.

Implements account policies, such as password expiration changes, across environments, and validates each change in non-production first to avoid service impact.

Service Models and Customer Engagement

Solaris: owns root and full operating system and hardware administration, and grants sudo for customer application operations.

Red Hat: supports managed servers, where Northramp administers the operating system and customers manage the applications, and customer-managed servers, where customers hold root, Northramp ensures operating system patching, and Northramp provides consulting on request.

Incident Response and Governance

Uses ServiceNow for change and incident management, follows Change Advisory Board (CAB) approvals and standard change windows, and delivers a post-incident root cause analysis (RCA) where applicable.

Takes part in xMatters on-call rotations (15-minute acknowledgment and tiered escalation) and coordinates with the network operations center (NOC) bridge during enterprise events such as DNS or network issues.

Documentation and Collaboration

Maintains SharePoint-hosted standard operating procedures (SOPs) and runbooks, with screenshots, for patch orchestration (ABE), rollback, automation playbooks, OEM upgrade steps, SL1 alerting, and security and vulnerability remediation workflows.

Aligns the documentation with the weekly UNIX and security syncs and with customer meetings.

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.

5 years or more administering Oracle Solaris (Zones and LDOMs) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux at scale, including operating system patching and change execution in regulated environments.

Hands-on experience with ABE-based Solaris patching, rollback, and vendor bundle planning, and experience adjusting to non-monthly patch cadences.

Practical experience with Puppet and Ansible for UNIX automation (playbooks and modules) and strong shell scripting in bash and ksh.

Familiarity with VMware-hosted Linux operations and coordination with platform teams.

Operational monitoring and security tooling: SL1, Tenable, Tripwire, and Splunk, plus host-level firewall management and security policy enforcement, such as password lifecycles.

Experience using ServiceNow (CAB and change templates, incident and RCA) and on-call processes through xMatters.

Strong documentation habits (SOPs and runbooks with screenshots) and a collaborative approach with customers and cybersecurity teams.

Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust.

Eligible to work in the United States.

Preferred Qualifications

Designed Ansible-first automation to replace legacy tools, such as Oracle Ops Center, for Solaris patch management, and integrated automation outputs with ServiceNow tasks and approvals.

Upgraded Oracle OEM and validated monitoring and administration flows during cutover.

Familiarity with Center for Internet Security (CIS) controls and practical UNIX and Linux hardening: file integrity, SSH posture, logging, and firewall.