Linux Administrator

Role & responsibilities

Looking for immediate joiner

Work Mode - Work From Office

Job Description: Linux Server Admin L2

Job Title: Linux Server Admin – L2

Band: Band 2

Experience: 4 to 8 years

Qualification: Bachelor's degree in computer science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience)

Location: Chennai (work from Office)

Shift: Rotational shifts, including 24x7 on call/support rotation as per business requirement

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced L2 Linux Server Admin to manage, support, and troubleshoot our Linux-based server environment. The ideal candidate will bring strong, hands-on Linux OS administration skills as the primary requirement for this role, along with working knowledge of virtualization/hypervisor platforms (VMware or Nutanix) as a secondary skill. The candidate will handle day-to-day Linux operations, deep-dive troubleshooting, and platform reliability tasks, working closely with L1 support and L3/Infrastructure Architects, and coordinating with the Hypervisor/Virtualization team where Linux workloads are hosted on virtualized infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

Linux Server Administration (Primary Skill)

• Manage and support Linux server environments (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu/SUSE) including installation, configuration, patching, and version upgrades.
• Perform day-to-day operations, incident and problem management (L2 escalations from L1), and RCA within defined SLAs for Linux-hosted systems and applications.
• Administer user/group management, file system and LVM management, disk/partition management, and storage mount configurations.
• Manage core Linux services — SSH, cron/systemd job scheduling, DNS/NFS/Samba, web/application servers, and package management (yum/dnf/apt).
• Perform kernel and OS patch management, including patch cycle planning, testing, deployment, and compliance reporting.
• Configure and manage high availability and clustering solutions for Linux workloads (Pacemaker/Corosync or equivalent).
• Manage backup and recovery activities for Linux systems, including backup job monitoring, restore validation, and DR drills.
• Automate routine administrative tasks using Shell/Bash and Python scripting, and configuration management tools (Ansible/Puppet/Chef).

Hypervisor & Virtualization Support (Secondary Skill)

• Provide L2-level support for Linux virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere/ESXi or Nutanix AHV/Prism environments, including basic VM lifecycle operations (provisioning, cloning, snapshots, resizing).
• Coordinate with the Hypervisor/Virtualization team on host-level issues affecting Linux VMs — resource contention, storage/datastore connectivity, and VM performance degradation.
• Support basic troubleshooting of VM-level issues — boot failures, guest tools/VM tools issues, and resource allocation problems — for Linux guest OS instances.
• Assist with capacity and performance monitoring of Linux VMs within the virtualization platform (vROps, Nutanix Prism monitoring, or equivalent).

Troubleshooting

• Diagnose and resolve Linux OS-level issues — boot failures, kernel panics, service crashes, driver conflicts, disk/memory pressure, and performance degradation.
• Troubleshoot networking issues on Linux systems — interface configuration, routing, firewall (iptables/firewalld), and DNS resolution problems.
• Investigate storage-related issues — filesystem corruption, LVM errors, disk space exhaustion, and mount point failures.
• Troubleshoot authentication and access issues — LDAP/AD integration (SSSD/Winbind), sudo/permission errors, and SSH key-based access problems.
• Perform root cause analysis for recurring incidents and drive permanent fixes in coordination with L3/Architecture teams.

Security & Access

• Implement and manage role-based access control (RBAC), sudo policies, and least-privilege access principles across Linux systems.
• Support hardening Linux servers as per organizational security baselines and CIS benchmarks.
• Manage SSH key management, certificates, and integration with enterprise secret/credential stores.
• Ensure compliance with patch SLAs, vulnerability remediation timelines, and audit requirements.

Platform & Automation

• Contribute to platform standardization — golden image/template creation, baseline configuration, and build documentation for Linux servers.
• Work with monitoring and observability tools (Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, or similar) to proactively identify performance and capacity issues.
• Support Infrastructure as Code practices for provisioning and managing Linux servers where applicable (Terraform, Ansible).
• Document runbooks, SOPs, architecture diagrams, and knowledge base articles for recurring issues.
• Participate in on-call rotation and support during planned maintenance/outages.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 4 to 8 years of hands-on experience in Linux server administration (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu/SUSE) as the primary skill set.
• Strong command over Linux system administration — user/file/storage management, service management, patching, and shell scripting.
• Working knowledge of virtualization/hypervisor platforms (VMware vSphere/ESXi or Nutanix AHV/Prism) is sufficient to support Linux VMs and coordinate with the virtualization team.
• Deep troubleshooting experience across Linux OS, storage, networking, and authentication/access issues.
• Working knowledge of backup and DR tools/processes for Linux-based workloads.

Preferred / Good to Have

• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) or equivalent Linux certification.
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP) or Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP) — as a secondary/good-to-have certification.
• Experience with configuration management and automation tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform).
• Exposure to containerization platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) running on Linux hosts.
• Experience with monitoring/observability tools (Nagios, Zabbix, Grafana, Prometheus).
• Knowledge of cloud-hosted Linux environments (AWS EC2, Azure VMs) in addition to on-prem virtualization.

Soft Skills

• Strong communication skills to collaborate with Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Security teams.
• Ability to work independently under SLA pressure in a 24x7 support environment.
• Analytical, methodical troubleshooting approach with an ownership mindset.
• Continuous learning attitude given the evolving Linux and virtualization ecosystem.

Preferred candidate profile