What are the responsibilities and job description for the Systems Engineer position at Slate Auto?
About Slate
At Slate, we’re building safe, reliable vehicles that people can afford, personalize and love—and doing it here in the USA as part of our commitment to reindustrialization. The spirit of DIY and customization runs throughout every element of a Slate, because people should have control over how their trucks look, feel, and represent them.
About The Role
We are looking for a Systems Engineer to own and evolve our Linux server infrastructure, container platforms, and monitoring systems across both IT and operational technology environments. You will build, automate, and maintain the systems that keep our operations running - from datacenter VMs to the factory floor. This is a hands-on role for someone who is equally comfortable writing Ansible playbooks as they are racking hardware and troubleshooting production outages.
What You’ll Do
What You Bring
This role supports a mixed IT/OT environment including datacenter, office, and plant-floor systems. Occasional after-hours work for maintenance windows and on-call rotation should be expected. Some physical work (racking equipment, running cable) is part of the job.
WHY JOIN TEAM SLATE?
At Slate, we’re fueled by grit, determination, and attention to detail. The start-up spirit of ingenuity and resourcefulness move our business forward. Team Slate fosters a culture of excellence, innovation, and mutual respect, and is motivated by shared principles.
Slate is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, parental status, cultural background, organizational level, work styles, tenure and life experiences. Or for any other reason.
Slate is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at
slate-talent_acquisition@slate.auto.
At Slate, we’re building safe, reliable vehicles that people can afford, personalize and love—and doing it here in the USA as part of our commitment to reindustrialization. The spirit of DIY and customization runs throughout every element of a Slate, because people should have control over how their trucks look, feel, and represent them.
About The Role
We are looking for a Systems Engineer to own and evolve our Linux server infrastructure, container platforms, and monitoring systems across both IT and operational technology environments. You will build, automate, and maintain the systems that keep our operations running - from datacenter VMs to the factory floor. This is a hands-on role for someone who is equally comfortable writing Ansible playbooks as they are racking hardware and troubleshooting production outages.
What You’ll Do
- Deploy, configure, and maintain RHEL and Rocky Linux servers across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
- Build and manage containerized workloads using Docker, including image lifecycle management, compose stacks, networking, and persistent storage.
- Develop and maintain Ansible automation for provisioning, configuration management, patching, and compliance enforcement across the server fleet.
- Administer Zabbix monitoring infrastructure - create and tune templates, configure alerting, build dashboards, and ensure comprehensive observability of all critical systems.
- Manage virtualization platforms and supporting infrastructure including storage, networking (VLANs, firewalling), and backup/recovery.
- Provision and maintain AWS resources - manage EC2 instances, RDS databases, security groups, and related cloud infrastructure.
- Maintain documentation and standard operating procedures for all managed systems.
- Participate in capacity planning, change management, and incident response.
- Collaborate with operations and engineering teams to support manufacturing and plant-floor technology needs.
What You Bring
- 3 years of hands-on experience administering RHEL-family Linux distributions (RHEL, Rocky, CentOS) in a production environment.
- Strong working knowledge of Docker - building images, managing containers, troubleshooting networking, and working with compose and registries.
- Demonstrated experience writing and maintaining Ansible playbooks, roles, and inventories for infrastructure automation.
- Experience deploying and administering Zabbix (or a comparable enterprise monitoring platform such as Nagios, LibreNMS, or Prometheus/Grafana), including custom template development and alert tuning.
- Experience with AWS infrastructure - specifically EC2 instance management (provisioning, security groups, AMIs) and RDS administration (deployment, backups, parameter tuning).
- Solid understanding of Linux networking (iptables/nftables, VLANs, bonding/teaming, DNS, NTP) and storage (LVM, ZFS, NFS).
- Comfort working in the terminal - scripting in Bash is second nature.
- Familiarity with hardware lifecycle management: racking servers, managing UPS/PDU infrastructure, cabling, and labeling.
- Strong troubleshooting methodology and the ability to work independently through ambiguous problems.
- Experience with Kubernetes (K8s) - cluster deployment, pod management, Helm charts, or managed K8s services.
- Exposure to PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) environments and industrial/OT networking concepts.
- Experience with Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform (gateway administration, module management, or tag/scripting work).
- Experience with virtualization platforms such as Proxmox, VMware, or Hyper-V, Kubernates.
- Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools beyond Ansible (Terraform, Packer).
- Relevant certifications (RHCSA/RHCE, AWS Solutions Architect/SysOps, CKA, Docker DCA, CompTIA Linux ).
This role supports a mixed IT/OT environment including datacenter, office, and plant-floor systems. Occasional after-hours work for maintenance windows and on-call rotation should be expected. Some physical work (racking equipment, running cable) is part of the job.
WHY JOIN TEAM SLATE?
At Slate, we’re fueled by grit, determination, and attention to detail. The start-up spirit of ingenuity and resourcefulness move our business forward. Team Slate fosters a culture of excellence, innovation, and mutual respect, and is motivated by shared principles.
- Safety First
- Delight Customers
- One Team
- Relentless Improvement
- Fast, Frugal, and Scrappy
- Respectful Collaboration
- Positive Legacy
Slate is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, parental status, cultural background, organizational level, work styles, tenure and life experiences. Or for any other reason.
Slate is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at
slate-talent_acquisition@slate.auto.