Mid-level Linux Infrastructure Administrator

Battelle delivers when others can't. We conduct research and development, manage national laboratories, design and manufacture products and deliver critical services for our clients-whether they are a multi-national corporation, a small start-up or a government agency.

We recognize and appreciate the value and contributions of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences and welcome all qualified individuals to apply.


Job Summary


Battelle's Cyber Business Line is seeking a mid-level Linux Infrastructure Administrator to help operate and grow an airgapped, multi-site research network supporting 70+ scientists and engineers. This role spans the full infrastructure stack-virtualization, identity, storage, networking, automation, and observability-within a petabyte-scale environment working toward CMMC Level 2 compliance.

As a Linux Infrastructure Administrator, you will work within a small, agile infrastructure team with broad ownership of the systems researchers depend on every day. This includes supporting enterprise virtualization, storage, networking, security hardening, automation, and GPU-enabled environments for offline AI/ML workloads. You will have the opportunity to design, automate, and improve infrastructure in a highly mission-focused, closed-network environment.

Location / Work Arrangement

• Location:
  
  Columbus, Ohio
• Employment Type:
  
  Full-time
• Work Arrangement:
  Primarily on-site in a closed-network research environment
• Schedule:
  
  Flexible, compressed work schedule with every other Friday off

Responsibilities

• Administer Linux domain services including identity, authentication, DNS/NTP, and certificate services across an airgapped, multi-site environment.
• Build, deploy, and maintain virtual machines and services on enterprise virtualization platforms such as VMware, Proxmox, Nutanix, or similar technologies.
• Develop and maintain Ansible playbooks and provisioning workflows for repeatable, automated system configuration.
• Administer enterprise storage infrastructure including NAS platforms, network file shares, and object storage.
• Support network operations including VLAN segmentation, enterprise firewall rule management, site-to-site VPN, and remote-access VPN.
• Deploy and operate containerized services and support migration of core services to a container orchestration platform.
• Implement and maintain security hardening, patching, file integrity monitoring, and audit logging in a disconnected environment.
• Support compliance activities aligned to CMMC Level 2 / NIST SP 800-171, including evidence collection and configuration baselines.
• Collaborate closely with researchers and technical staff to improve reliability, automation, and usability of shared infrastructure.

Key Qualifications

• Experience with Linux systems administration in an enterprise or research environment.
• Experience with Linux domain administration, identity or directory services, centralized authentication, and host lifecycle management.
• Knowledge of networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, VLANs, firewalls, VPNs, and multi-site architectures.
• Experience with configuration management and automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or Salt.
• Experience with containerization and container orchestration technologies.
• Storage administration experience including RAID, volume management, network file shares, backup, and recovery.
• Strong Python and Bash scripting fundamentals.
• Virtualization experience with enterprise hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM-based platforms, or similar technologies.
• U.S. citizenship required.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Secret clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience administering airgapped, disconnected, or classified networks, including offline mirrors, removable-media transfer, and manual patch workflows.
• STIG, CIS benchmark, or other compliance baselining experience; familiarity with NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC.
• Identity and access management experience including directory services, LDAP/Kerberos, SSO/OIDC, PKI, and hardware-token deployment.
• Distributed NAS administration experience.
• Database administration experience in relational and/or search and analytics platforms.
• Monitoring and SIEM experience including metrics and dashboarding, log aggregation, and host-based intrusion detection.
• Experience with CI/CD and artifact management including pipelines, container registries, and offline package mirrors.
• Experience with bare-metal and golden-image provisioning tooling.
• Experience supporting GPU compute clusters or self-hosted AI/ML inference workloads.
• Experience establishing, writing, and enforcing infrastructure policy.
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight.
• Relevant certifications such as RHCSA, CompTIA Linux+, or Security+ (DoD 8570 IAT Level II).

Some of the Extras That Make Working Here Great

• Flexible, compressed work schedule with every other Friday off
• Paid time off (PTO)
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage with wellness incentives
• 401(k) retirement savings plan with employer contributions
• Tuition…