Linux System Engineer

Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet) was established in 1989 and is widely regarded as the founder of the Internet in Australia and renowned as the architect, builder and operator of world-class network infrastructure for research and education. 

We are Australia’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). We connect over one million users—researchers, faculty, staff and students—at institutions across Australia, supporting education and research across a diverse range disciplines including high energy physics, climate science, genomics, radio astronomy and the arts.

Nationally, AARNet interconnects Australian universities, the CSIRO, and other organisations who have a research and education mission, or with whom the education and research sector interacts. These include hospitals, vocational training providers, schools and museums. Internationally, AARNet interconnects the Australian Research and Education (R & E) community to the world – and continuously develops new capabilities and partnerships to facilitate seamless data access and transfer. 

We are an organisation of innovators, doers, and courageous thinkers. We are not constrained by traditional products and solutions and we constantly strive to build the solutions that our customers will need tomorrow – today. If you have the imagination, foresight and drive to build the future why not come and join us?

The role entails supporting and developing methodologies and toolsets to facilitate robust environment operations. It is essential the candidate has excellent skills in automation, orchestration, configuration management and monitoring methodologies. The role requires that the candidate be comfortable with both team based and autonomous environments; problem ownership and solution focus; and have an unwavering commitment to service excellence.

This is a permanent full time position which will have some out of hours work from time to time.

• Work within the systems infrastructure team to design, deploy and manage an automated virtualization platform.
• Continuous development using automation services to deliver products using an agile methodology.
• Provide technical support for applications and systems infrastructure, taking ownership of problems and managing through to resolution.
• Respond to incidents, faults and difficulties as escalated from the operations centre.
• Identify root cause, liaise with Product Owners and develop long term solutions.
• Show leadership and provide high levels of expertise to support service level objectives
• Design and build new services to add value to AARNets products and services.
• Complete security audits on a routine basis.
• Perform other job-related duties as required and work towards continuous improving the environment and processes.

• Demonstrated ability to work under pressure, prioritise tasks, meet deadlines, attention to detail and maintain professionalism.
• Deep understanding of core Server Engineering concepts and relevant experience.
• Red Hat Certification is preferred.
• Strong working knowledge with multi-server automated remote deployments.
• Strong working knowledge with automation technologies eg. Ansible, Puppet, Jenkins, etc.
• Strong working knowledge in virtualisation and containerisation technologies.
• Strong understanding of securing applications and linux operating systems.

Must have the ability to:

• Professionally respond to, and work collaboratively with customers and colleagues.
• Work independently, be self-motivated and able to prioritise tasks.
• Learn and understand, troubleshoot and solve problems.
• Understand or certified in AGILE methodologies.

In addition, the following skills would be highly advantageous:

• High Availability and failover scenarios, load-balanced environments
• Familiarity with monitoring systems and Application level monitoring, ie Zabbix, Icinga etc
• Experience running workloads on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Knowledge of networking/routing
• Experience security management (i.e., system hardening, log management, configuration management)

AARNet is committed to diversity and providing equal opportunity to all. We’re a great place to work if you want to make a difference.  

AARNet provides competitive remuneration and a host of other benefits in line with our HR policies which include:

• 17% superannuation;

• Flexible work options;

• Options to purchase additional Annual Leave;

• 2 days paid Women’s Wellness Leave per month;

• 24 weeks paid Parental Leave – Primary Carer;

• Welcome back to AARNet superannuation payment – on unpaid Parental Leave for Primary Carer;

• 4 weeks paid Birth Trauma Leave;

• 24 weeks paid - Adoption Leave;

• 16 weeks paid Parental Leave – Secondary Carer;

• 5 days paid – First Nations Cultural Leave;

• 2 days paid Family Wedding Leave;

• 24 weeks paid – Foster Carer Leave;

• 5 days paid – Fertility Leave;

• 8 weeks paid – Gender Affirmation Leave;

• Strong Equal Opportunity focus; 

• Sector leader in Social Responsibility and Ethics; and

• A culture and company structure that allows your career to grow with access to leading edge technologies