Senior Linux Infrastructure Engineer

About Northern Light

Northern Light provides the world’s most sophisticated machine learning‑powered competitive intelligence platform for market research. For over 25 years, we’ve been helping Fortune 1000 enterprises make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions through our award‑winning Single Point knowledge management platform. Our clients include global leaders across technology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and life sciences who depend on us to transform fragmented data into strategic clarity.

We’re a company that takes pride in our compulsive drive to provide exceptional client support. We wake up each day ready to tackle the challenges of knowledge management and we never stand still. Our recent innovations include generative AI capabilities, machine learning insights, and advanced competitive intelligence automation.

Northern Light is seeking an experienced Senior Linux Infrastructure Engineer to take hands‑on ownership of our Linux‑based infrastructure. In this role, you’ll be responsible for operating, maintaining, and evolving a mission‑critical environment that runs on a mix of bare‑metal and virtualised systems in our private colocation datacenter.

This is a highly technical, hands‑on position for someone who enjoys working close to the hardware, values operational excellence, and thrives in environments where reliability, security, and scalability matter.

• Operate and maintain a Linux infrastructure of ~70 HPE DL360 Gen9/Gen
  10 bare‑metal servers and ~150 virtual machines
• Administer RHEL‑based systems (primarily Oracle Linux
  9), including installation, patching, upgrades, and security hardening
• Support virtualization platforms, including:
  • VMware (5 nodes, ~100 VMs), with potential future migration to Red Hat OVE
  • KVM‑based virtualization supporting Kubernetes workloads (~50 VMs)
• Perform on‑site datacenter operations in a private six‑rack cage, including racking, cabling, labeling, hardware replacement, and decommissioning
• Maintain and administer core infrastructure services such as:
  • Mail relay (Sendmail)
  • DNS (BIND)
  • SFTP (ProFTPd)
  • LDAP‑backed authentication and authorization
  • Package repository mirroring (Foreman)
  • Centralized automation and orchestration (Ansible Automation Platform)
  • On‑prem Git Lab Premium for version control and CI/CD
• Develop and maintain standard operating procedures covering:
  • Inventory management (Net Box)
  • Monitoring, alerting, and observability (Logic Monitor)
  • Incident response and root‑cause analysis
  • Vulnerability and patch management (Tenable One)
  • Backup, recovery, and disaster recovery (Veeam)
• Participate in incident response, scheduled maintenance, and post‑incident reviews
• Collaborate with vendors, service providers, and internal engineering, security, and operations teams
• Support secure, compliant infrastructure that enables product delivery and business needs

• We're looking for someone with 7+ years of Linux systems engineering experience, including at least 3 years as the primary owner of infrastructure at scale — not a contributor on a team, but the person accountable for uptime, security, and reliability. RHEL‑based distributions are required;
  Oracle Linux 9 is strongly preferred
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience
• Demonstrated ability to manage the full server lifecycle end‑to‑end: OS installation and hardening, configuration management, patching cadence, capacity planning, and decommissioning
• Deep proficiency with Linux system internals: kernel tuning, systemd service management, storage subsystems (LVM, RAID, NFS/NAS), and network stack configuration (bonding, VLANs, firewall rules via firewalld/iptables)
• Proven experience designing and maintaining high‑availability and redundant architectures in production — not just operating them
• Direct, hands‑on experience with HPE Pro Liant (or equivalent enterprise) servers, including iLO/IPMI management, firmware updates, hardware diagnostics, and component replacement
• Experience performing all physical datacenter tasks independently: rack and stack, structured cabling, labeling, power management, and…