Linux Infrastructure Automation Engineer

Role: Linux Infrastructure Automation Engineer/Automation Services Engineer

Employment Type: Full Time

Work setting: Leesburg VA (Onsite Job)

Job Type: Full-Time

$140, 000 – 150, 000 Benefits (Flexible depending upon experience)

Interview: 2 round of virtual interview

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Experience working in:
• Infrastructure/platform teams
• Service providers / MSPs
• Environments where systems are built for others
• Comfortable with:
• Ambiguity
• Learning new tools quickly
• Owning problems end-to-end
• Not a fit for candidates who:
• Only operate tools (don’t build)
• Lack hands-on systems experience
• Prefer narrow specialization

Why Join This Team

• Work on the core platform that powers engineering across the organization
• High visibility and impact across multiple teams
• Strong emphasis on automation, open-source, and modern infrastructure practices
• Opportunity to work on emerging internal AI use cases
• Broad technical exposure across systems, networking, CI/CD, and tooling

Position Summary

The client is hiring multiple Automation Services Engineers to join a growing team responsible for building the automation, tooling, and services that power internal engineering teams.

This team operates as a platform enablement function, creating the infrastructure, CI/CD validation pipelines, and automation frameworks that other teams depend on to reliably deliver outcomes.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on infrastructure generalist—someone who has worked with real systems in production and can build automation around them.

“Jack of all trades, master of none—but better than most.”

What You’ll Do

• Build and maintain infrastructure automation frameworks using Ansible and related tools
• Develop and manage CI/CD pipelines (GitLab) for validation, testing, and deployment
• Design and implement repeatable, reliable system configurations using infrastructure-as-code practices
• Automate installation, configuration, patching, and validation of systems and services
• Build and maintain nightly/continuous validation pipelines to detect drift and ensure system health
• Integrate and “glue together” open-source tools and platforms into cohesive solutions
• Support internal engineering teams by delivering platform services and automation tooling
• Troubleshoot issues across:
• Linux systems
• Networking
• Storage
• Virtualization
• Build or customize OS images for consistent deployments (Packer or similar tools)
• Contribute to internal AI initiatives (locally hosted AI use cases and tooling)
• Work within Git-based workflows (merge requests, code reviews, branching strategies)

Core Technical Requirements

• Strong Linux systems administration experience (real-world, production environments)
• Hands-on experience with one or more configuration/automation tools:
• Ansible (preferred)
• Puppet, Chef, Salt
• Experience with:
• Infrastructure automation (IaC mindset)
• CI/CD pipelines (GitLab preferred)
• Git-based workflows
• Ability to:
• Troubleshoot across multiple layers (OS, network, services)
• Turn manual processes into automated, repeatable workflows
• Work across a broad technical stack rather than a narrow specialty

Highly Desired Experience

• Experience in:
• Platform engineering / infrastructure teams
• Managed services providers (MSPs), hosting, or service providers
• Supporting internal engineering teams
• Experience with:
• Image building tools (Packer strongly preferred)
• Virtualization platforms (Proxmox, VMware, KVM, etc.)
• Open-source infrastructure and software ecosystems
• Networking fundamentals (routing, firewalls, connectivity troubleshooting)
• Familiarity with:
• Automating validation pipelines (including nightly checks)
• Managing multi-environment configurations and inventories

What We’re Looking For (Screening Focus)

• Build vs Operate mindset — prefers creating systems/tools over manual ops work
• Strong infrastructure automation capability
• True platform engineering orientation (building for other engineers)
• Solid Linux foundation
• Ability to connect systems and tools into cohesive platforms
• Interest in locally hosted AI and emerging internal tooling initiatives

Engineering Mindset

• Automation-first thinking (idempotent, repeatable, testable systems)
• Strong troubleshooting instincts across layers
• Bias toward practical, maintainable solutions
• Focus on:
• Reliability
• Observability
• Documentation
• Long-term ownership

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Scripting or light development (Python, Bash, Go)
• Experience with:
• Proxmox or similar
• GitLab CI/CD at scale
• Open-source tool integration
• Exposure to:
• Configuration management ecosystems
• Internal platform tooling