Senior Linux Infrastructure Engineer

Northern Light•Somerville, MA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

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 SinglePoint 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 virtualized 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.

Requirements

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 ProLiant (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 hardware lifecycle tracking in a private colo or equivalent environment
Production-level administration of VMware vSphere/ESXi environments (vCenter, VM lifecycle, resource pools, snapshots, HA/DRS) and KVM-based virtualization (libvirt, virt-manager, bridged/NAT networking); experience supporting platform migrations (e.g., VMware to open-source hypervisors) is a strong plus
Hands-on experience building and maintaining Ansible playbooks and roles for configuration management, OS hardening, and orchestrated change deployment — not just running existing playbooks
Demonstrated experience administering production DNS (BIND), LDAP-backed authentication, mail relay, and SFTP services — including troubleshooting, zone management, schema modifications, and integration with downstream systems
Experience managing on-prem package repository infrastructure (Foreman or equivalent) and enforcing controlled patching workflows across a large server fleet
Hands-on experience with enterprise monitoring and alerting platforms (LogicMonitor, Zabbix, Nagios, or equivalent), including building meaningful alerting thresholds and dashboards; active experience with vulnerability management tools (Tenable, Qualys, or equivalent): scan interpretation, remediation prioritization, and patch compliance tracking
Experience owning backup and disaster recovery operations end-to-end: policy design, Veeam (or equivalent) administration, recovery testing, and DR runbook maintenance
Track record of leading incident response, conducting post-mortems, and producing root-cause analyses with lasting corrective actions; strong technical documentation discipline (SOPs, runbooks, infrastructure diagrams) and ability to communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes
Solid networking fundamentals with hands-on experience collaborating with network teams on switches, firewalls, and load balancers; sufficient depth to independently scope and escalate network-adjacent infrastructure issues
On-site presence required at a private colocation facility in Somerville, MA; datacenter work may involve elevated noise levels and variable temperatures; limited after-hours or weekend maintenance (historically ~3–5 times per year)
Must be authorized to work in the United States (unfortunately, we cannot sponsor visas).
Must be local to Boston/Somerville area, with shared on-site presence required between the office and a Somerville-based colocation data center

Nice To Haves

Potential future migration to Red Hat OVE KVM-based virtualization supporting Kubernetes workloads
Experience supporting platform migrations (e.g., VMware to open-source hypervisors) is a strong plus

Responsibilities

Operate and maintain a Linux infrastructure of ~70 HPE DL360 Gen9/Gen10 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 GitLab Premium for version control and CI/CD
Develop and maintain standard operating procedures covering: Inventory management (NetBox), Monitoring, alerting, and observability (LogicMonitor), 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