Senior IT Systems Administrator (Linux Admin)

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.
CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.
Role Overview:
CHAOS Industries is looking for a Senior IT Systems Administrator with deep Linux expertise to design, build, secure, and operate the Linux infrastructure our engineering and program teams depend on. You will keep servers, services, and cloud workloads reliable, patched, and compliant in a defense environment where uptime and data protection are both non-negotiable. As a senior member of the IT organization, you will act as a technical lead for Linux systems engineering: setting standards, owning the hardest problems, and mentoring teammates, while partnering with cybersecurity, service desk, engineering, and program teams.

• Team mandate: keep the Linux platforms running reliably, securely, and predictably, and automate everything repeatable so the team can spend its time on improvements. You will be the escalation point for complex systems issues and a trusted advisor on infrastructure decisions.
• Ownership: technical ownership of the Linux server environment, including architecture, configuration management, patching, monitoring, backup and recovery, and hardening, plus leadership of infrastructure projects such as platform migrations, new site standups, and environment consolidations as the company grows.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, administer, and maintain Linux server environments (physical, virtual, and cloud), including provisioning, configuration, patching, monitoring, and lifecycle management across Red Hat-family and Debian-family distributions.
• Design and maintain automation and configuration management using Ansible, shell, and Python to standardize builds, enforce configuration, and streamline patching, reporting, and routine administration.
• Build and maintain hardened, standardized server images and templates aligned to security baselines such as DISA STIG and CIS benchmarks, including SELinux, auditd, and FIPS-validated cryptography where required.
• Manage Linux storage and networking, including LVM, file systems, NFS, DNS, firewalls, and system tuning for performance and capacity.
• Integrate Linux systems with enterprise identity services (Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, SSSD) and enforce SSH key management, sudo policy, MFA, and privileged access controls.
• Deploy and manage Linux workloads in virtualized and cloud environments, including Azure and AWS virtual machines, and support containerized workloads where applicable.
• Serve as technical lead and final escalation point for complex incidents; perform root-cause analysis and drive permanent fixes.
• Mentor and coach junior systems administrators and service desk staff, and set technical standards, best practices, and peer review for the team.
• Lead infrastructure projects from planning through delivery, including platform migrations, site buildouts, and the integration of newly acquired environments.
• Own backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity design for Linux systems, including regular restore testing and recovery objectives.
• Monitor system health, logs, and performance with centralized monitoring and logging tools; remediate vulnerabilities in partnership with cybersecurity.
• Support compliance requirements (such as CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, and FedRAMP) by maintaining configuration documentation, logs, and access reviews, and providing evidence for audits.
• Review technical designs and changes, follow the change control process, and communicate maintenance windows and impacts to stakeholders.
• Evaluate and recommend tools and technologies, and contribute to the infrastructure roadmap, capacity planning, and budget inputs.
• Create and maintain system documentation, runbooks, and architecture diagrams.
• Participate in an on-call rotation and occasional after-hours maintenance windows for critical systems.
• Travel: minimal, up to roughly 10% (occasional trips to company offices and new sites).
• Physical demands: primarily sedentary work at a computer; occasional lifting of equipment up to 25 lbs and work in server or network rooms.

Minimum Requirements:

• Minimum education:
  • Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or another related field or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of progressive experience administering enterprise Linux server environments (such as RHEL, Rocky, CentOS, Ubuntu, or Debian).
• Expert command-line and troubleshooting skills, with deep knowledge of systemd, networking, storage (LVM, file systems, NFS), and performance tuning.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in Bash and Python, and experience with configuration management tools such as Ansible.
• Experience hardening Linux systems and remediating vulnerabilities in a regulated environment, including SELinux, auditd, DISA STIG or CIS baselines, and NIST SP 800-171 or CMMC requirements.
• Experience integrating Linux with enterprise identity (Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, SSSD) and managing SSH, sudo, and privileged access.
• Experience owning patch management, monitoring, and backup and disaster recovery, including testing restores and meeting recovery objectives.
• Track record of leading infrastructure projects and mentoring other engineers, with strong documentation and communication skills.
• U.S. person status, as required for access to CUI and export-controlled data (ITAR/EAR).

Preferred Requirements:

• Experience running Linux in Azure, AWS, or Azure Government and Microsoft GCC High environments, including hybrid and multi-cloud designs.
• Experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Podman, or Kubernetes) and with virtualization platforms such as KVM or VMware.
• Linux or cloud certification such as RHCSA, RHCE, LFCS, or Azure or AWS Associate-level; security certification such as Security+ or CISSP.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and CI/CD tooling (Terraform, Git-based workflows, or pipelines).
• Experience supporting CMMC, NIST 800-171, or FedRAMP assessments, and an active U.S. government security clearance or the ability to obtain one.

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
• Our Perks: Free daily lunch while you're working onsite, fully-stocked kitchen, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Team Growth: 500+ employees and counting across 5 global offices

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. 

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