Systems Administrator III-IV - UPDATED
$74,000–$106,000 year
On-site · Charlottesville, Virginia, United States or Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Job Summary
Senior Systems Administrator III-IV responsible for maintaining the Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure supporting end-to-end science data pipelines across NRAO observatories. Lead transition to GitOps-driven infrastructure, migrate legacy Docker Swarm services to Kubernetes, and develop automation tooling in Python and SQL to monitor data pipeline health and generate metrics. Serve as Level-3 escalation for production incidents, perform root-cause analysis, and produce post-mortem reports. Participate in agile development cycles, validate releases, and produce user documentation. Contribute to cross-site standardization via the NRAO Common Computing Environment, mentor junior staff, and travel to NRAO sites (VLA, ALMA) as needed. Strong Linux expertise, experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift, container orchestration, and observatory-scale deployments; excellent written and verbal communication to astronomers and project leads.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Astronomy, Physics, or equivalent professional experience
- 4+ years in Linux systems administration in mission-critical or scientific computing environments
- Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8/9; RHCE or RHCA preferred
- Experience with modern automation/orchestration (Ansible, GitOps with ArgoCD/Flux, Kubernetes/OpenShift, Docker Swarm)
- Programming/Scripting in Python and SQL (PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL)
- Experience with monitoring/alerting stacks (Telegraf, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki)
- Strong communication skills; ability to convey complex conditions clearly
- Willingness to travel to NRAO sites including VLA/ALMA
Additional Requirements
- Observatory employees must be authorized to work in the United States
- No H-1B sponsorship available
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