Unix Systems Engineer

Job Summary

The Unix Systems Engineer is a key member of the University of Colorado Office of Information Technology (OIT) Shared Infrastructure Services team, focused on providing system administration of centrally-managed infrastructure and shared services for the CU Boulder campus.

This position is responsible for ensuring the availability of critical services by leveraging all layers of the shared application stack, providing performance management, capacity planning, change management, monitoring, and responding to service disruptions. In this role, you will:

• Deploy high-availability, fast, stable, scalable, and secure shared service environments in accordance with established standards
• Ensure the integrity of system data.
• Work as part of a larger team to provide a high-quality service to customers.
• Cross-train other team members.

The University of Colorado Boulder is committed to building a culturally diverse community of faculty, staff, and students dedicated to contributing to an inclusive campus environment. We are an Equal Opportunity employer, including veterans and individuals with disabilities.

Who We Are

Vision:

• OIT will be valued by campus as a strategic, inclusive and innovative partner in advancing learning and discovery in order to enable CU Boulder to be a premier public university.

Mission:

• OIT enables campus priorities by providing high-value IT services and solutions.

Values:

• Trust, as a foundation for how we engage with one another and with campus partners, along with
• Avid curiosity in how to better support the campus and our stakeholder’s while
• Fostering empowerment and authentic engagement among ourselves and
• Celebrating inclusivity that promotes a sense of belonging while acknowledging that each person is unique and valued.

Strategy:

• OIT will advance learning and discovery by delivering high-value reliable IT services and solutions that:
• Provide a fluid and adaptable academic and student experience
• Enable research competitiveness and
• Deliver core infrastructure and enterprise IT services for business effectiveness.

Based on our departmental goals and our commitment to diversity and inclusive excellence, OIT particularly welcomes applications from candidates whose knowledge, skills, and abilities, and desire to contribute to an inclusive campus environment, will help us achieve our vision of a diverse and inclusive community.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

Linux/UNIX System Administration:

• This position will be responsible for ongoing daily system administration of Linux/UNIX systems that are entrusted to OIT Shared Infrastructure Services and are critical to the mission of the CU Boulder campus. This includes adding and removing hardware, account management, performing system diagnostics, installation and upgrades of operating systems and software, patch maintenance, monitoring, awareness and adherence to campus security requirements, maintaining documentation and providing support to end-users and others in the organization. Additionally, this position will be working with containers, specifically Docker, both for flexibility and for separation of applications and Operating Systems.

• This position will determine design for the infrastructure of a system based upon the service and technical requirements provided by a customer or project team; work with internal and external customers to determine specific Operating System design and layout to meet their service requirements (includes determining physical or virtual system, disk layout, software requirements, and required services on the system); decide how to implement system changes based on business, technical, or security policies or requirements; compile and install software and tools requested by internal or external customers as well as required for the on-going management and security of the system; debug a system that crashes or becomes unresponsive and decide when to escalate the issue, and help develop new configuration files to manage the configuration of a new class of server.
• An understanding of each service as well as its impact to the customer and to campus is critical for scheduling, notification, and change reporting. This position will participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation responsible for ensuring the availability and integrity of the systems entrusted to them.

Configuration Management:

• This position will be responsible for contributing to the configuration management solution (currently Chef and Ansible). This includes creating cookbooks, playbooks, and policies for services and systems to be run on premises and in the public cloud, helping with design decisions of configuration management solution, streamlining processes and procedures around configuration management. Additionally, this position will contribute to the design of the testing pipeline, upgrades of Chef code and recipes, Ansible playbooks, and alignment of local cookbooks with those upstream.

Evaluate Strategic and Potential Technologies:

• This position will investigate new technologies that support tactical and strategic objectives. This position will also build, test, and evaluate new technologies to recommend on their applicability to key organizational and program objectives.
• Changes to infrastructure, advances in technology, and changes in regulatory expectations may identify performance constraints or opportunities to particular system infrastructure objectives. This position will evaluate potential products or techniques to provide insight into new program projects and services before they are necessary will help the organization to remain relevant and to evaluate opportunities in a timely manner.

Professional Development:

• This position will maintain proficiency and acquire new technical knowledge by reading technical journals, manuals, newsgroups and web sites, attending seminars and conferences, participating in discussions with colleagues, and consulting with vendors and industry peers. This position will identify and elect training opportunities that provide support for common service areas or future technologies. It is also responsible for identifying personal and team opportunities for targeted or participatory continuous improvement and knowledge development in identity and access or relevant service and support topics.

What You Should Know

• This position may be 100% remote.
• This position will participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation responsible for ensuring the availability and integrity of a variety of core computing services and is also expected to train on and support other Linux systems, applications, and services.

• All University of Colorado Boulder employees are required to comply with the campus COVID-19 vaccine requirement .

• New employees must provide proof of vaccination or receive a medical or religious exemption within 30 days of employment.

What We Can Offer

• Salary range for this position is $78,500 to $83,000.
  
  

Benefits

The University of Colorado offers excellent benefits , including medical, dental, retirement, paid time off, tuition benefit and ECO Pass. The University of Colorado Boulder is one of the largest employers in Boulder County and offers an inspiring higher education environment. Learn more about the University of Colorado Boulder .

Be Statements
Be collaborative. Be diverse. Be Boulder.

What We Require

• A Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field. A combination of education and related experience may be substituted for the degree on a year for year basis.
  
  
• 2 years of RedHat Enterprise Linux or other Linux distribution administration in an Enterprise environment, including implementing and maintaining complex web systems based on the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack.
• Experience with building and maintaining systems with configurations management (Chef, Ansible, Puppet).

What You Will Need

• Strong written and oral communication skills.

What We Would Like You To Have

• Knowledge of and skills with web application stack accelerators such as HTTP accelerators like Varnish, PHP cache optimization like APC, and database caching tools like memcached.
• Knowledge of and practical skills with multiple content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla, MediaWiki, SharePoint, Confluence, etc.
• Experience with at least one development language such as Java, Python, Ruby, Powershell, etc.
• Experience with bug/ticket tracking system such as Jira.
• Knowledge of and practical skills with MySQL, Vault (secrets management), VMWare virtualization and SDLC.
• ITIL Certification.

Special Instructions

To apply, please submit the following materials:

1. A current resume.
   
2. A cover letter that specifically tells us how your background and experience align with the requirements, qualifications, and responsibilities of the position.

We may request references at a later time.

Please apply by March 6, 2022 for consideration.

Note: Application materials will not be accepted via email. For consideration, please apply through CU Boulder Jobs .

Posting Contact Information

Posting Contact Name: Boulder Campus Human Resources

Posting Contact Email: Recruiting@colorado.edu