Linux Systems Administrator

At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget.

Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus.

The National Security Directorate (NSD) drives science-based, mission-focused solutions to take on complex,real-world threats to our nation and the world.

The PNNL Field Intelligence Element (FIE) is an intelligence component of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence Field Intelligence Enterprise.

The FIE Operations Division, part of the National Security Directorate, is comprised of a cohesive team of leaders stewarding the capabilities and resources of the FIE in support of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, DOE, and other sponsors. The FIE is compliant, strategically proactive, and customer service oriented and offers efficient services and resources to support the FIE mission.

We are seeking a skilled and motivated Linux Systems Engineer to help design, operate, automate, and improve our Linux-based infrastructure. This role is responsible for maintaining reliable, secure, and scalable systems across on-premises and/or cloud environments.

The ideal candidate has several years of hands‑on Linux administration experience, strong troubleshooting skills, and familiarity with automation, monitoring, networking, and cloud technologies. You will work closely with engineering, security, and operations teams to support production services and continuously improve platform reliability.

• Administer, maintain, and troubleshoot Linux servers and services in production and non-production environments.
• Perform system provisioning, patching, upgrades, configuration management, and lifecycle maintenance.
• Monitor system performance, capacity, availability, and security; respond to alerts and incidents as needed.
• Investigate and resolve complex operating system, application, storage, networking, and performance issues.
• Develop and maintain automation for repetitive operational tasks using tools such as Ansible, Terraform, Bash, or Python.
• Support cloud and virtualized infrastructure, including environments such as AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, KVM, or similar platforms.
• Manage core Linux services such as DNS, SSH, NTP, LDAP/Active Directory integration, web servers, file systems, and logging.
• Implement and maintain system hardening, access controls, vulnerability remediation, backups, and disaster recovery procedures.
• Partner with security teams to ensure systems meet organizational security and compliance requirements.
• Maintain technical documentation, including system configurations, runbooks, troubleshooting guides, and standard operating procedures.
• Collaborate with software engineering and Dev Ops teams to improve deployment processes, observability, and platform reliability.

• Experience administering Linux systems in an enterprise, cloud, SaaS, or high‑availability environment.
• Strong working knowledge of Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, or SUSE.
• Experience with Linux system administration concepts, including:
  • User and group management
  • File systems, storage, LVM, and permissions
  • Process and service management
  • Package management
  • System logging and troubleshooting
  • Performance tuning and capacity management
• Proficiency with scripting or automation using Bash, Python, or a similar language.
• Experience with configuration management and infrastructure‑as‑code tools, such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform, or similar.
• Familiarity with networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, routing, firewalls, load balancing, and TLS/SSL.
• Experience with monitoring and logging platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, Splunk, ELK/Open Search, or similar tools.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and services in AWS, Azure, GCP, or another major cloud provider.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and documentation skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and work effectively both independently and as part of a…