Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Position Specifications

Attribute

Details

Position Title

Senior Site Reliability Engineer (RHEL Specialist)

Primary Location

Remote

Minimum Experience

5+ Years in Systems Engineering, DevOps, or SRE roles

Reporting Structure

Reports to the Head of Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

Language Requirements

Portuguese and English

1.3 Role Summary

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer (RHEL Specialist) is a critical technical leadership role responsible for ensuring that our production environments are resilient, performant, and highly automated. Unlike traditional systems administration, this role treats infrastructure as a software problem. You will be the primary custodian of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ecosystem, applying advanced engineering practices to manage thousands of nodes across on-premise virtualization and public cloud platforms.

Your mission is to bridge the gap between software development and systems operations by designing self-healing systems and robust Ansible-based automation frameworks. You will be expected to proactively identify system inefficiencies, optimize kernel performance, and architect CI/CD pipelines that empower development teams while maintaining strict production stability.

Core Mission Statement:

To engineer a world-class RHEL environment where manual intervention is the exception, not the rule. Through advanced automation and deep observability, you will ensure our services achieve 99.99% availability while enabling rapid, low-risk software delivery.

1.4 Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a proactive problem-solver with a "software-first" approach to infrastructure. We are looking for an individual who:

Possesses a deep-seated expertise in the RHEL kernel , system internals, and performance tuning.

Views Ansible and Python as their primary tools for managing complexity at scale.

Demonstrates a proven track record of managing Docker and Kubernetes workloads in high-traffic production settings.

Is naturally curious and proactive, often identifying and resolving system bottlenecks before they trigger an alert.

Thrives in a collaborative DevOps culture and is comfortable navigating the complexities of hybrid-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

2. Key Responsibilities

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer (RHEL Specialist) is responsible for the availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and capacity planning of our enterprise Linux services. This role demands a unique blend of systems engineering expertise and software development skills to build and run large-scale, distributed, fault-tolerant systems.

2.1 Automation & Infrastructure Orchestration

Ansible Framework Design: Architect, implement, and maintain enterprise-grade automation solutions using Ansible for our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) fleet. This includes developing custom Ansible roles, modules, and playbooks to automate system provisioning, configuration management, and patching.

Standard Operating Environment (SOE): Maintain and evolve the RHEL SOE across hybrid-cloud environments, ensuring consistency between on-premise virtualization (VMware/KVM) and public cloud instances.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Transform manual infrastructure workflows into automated code-based processes, ensuring that every component of the RHEL environment is version-controlled and reproducible.

2.2 Development & Toil Reduction

Scripting & Tooling: Develop advanced scripts in Python and Bash to automate repetitive operational tasks (toil). You will be expected to build internal tools that enhance the productivity of the entire engineering organization.

System Integration: Write code to integrate infrastructure components with internal APIs, monitoring tools, and service management platforms to create seamless, end-to-end automated workflows.

Kernel & OS Optimization: Leverage deep Linux knowledge to tune system parameters and develop automated checks for system health and performance bottlenecks.

2.3 CI/CD & Release Engineering

Pipeline Construction: Build and optimize robust CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins or GitLab CI to automate the testing and deployment of infrastructure code and application workloads.

Deployment Strategies: Implement modern deployment methodologies such as Blue-Green or Canary releases to minimize downtime and risk during system updates.

Artifact Management: Oversee the lifecycle of container images and software packages, ensuring they are securely built, scanned, and distributed across the RHEL landscape.

Focus on Proactive Optimization:

A primary accountability of this role is the continuous identification of system inefficiencies. You will not just react to failures; you will actively hunt for potential failure modes, performance regressions, and architectural weaknesses, proposing and implementing automated fixes before they impact the business.

2.4 Service Level Management & Observability

Defining SLOs/SLIs: Collaborate with product and development teams to define meaningful Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) that accurately represent the user experience.

Monitoring & Alerting: Design and implement comprehensive monitoring frameworks that provide deep visibility into RHEL system health and application performance, ensuring alerts are actionable and signal-rich.

Capacity Planning: Utilize performance data to forecast future resource requirements and automate scaling actions across the hybrid-cloud estate.

2.5 Incident Response & Reliability Leadership

Incident Management: Participate in a tiered on-call rotation and lead the response for critical production incidents. You will be responsible for stabilizing systems under pressure while maintaining clear communication with stakeholders.

Post-Mortem Analysis: Conduct blameless post-mortems to identify the root causes of incidents and drive the implementation of automated preventative measures.

SRE Evangelism: Act as a champion for reliability engineering. Mentor other engineers on SRE best practices, RHEL optimization, and the cultural shift toward "everything-as-code."

3. Required Technical Skills & Qualifications

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer (RHEL Specialist) must possess a deep technical foundation in enterprise Linux systems and modern DevOps methodologies. We are seeking a candidate who has transitioned from traditional systems administration to an automation-first engineering mindset, capable of managing complex, distributed environments.

Mandatory Requirement:

A minimum of 5 years of professional experience in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or Senior Linux Systems Administration is required. Candidates must demonstrate high-level proficiency in managing production RHEL environments at scale.

3.1 Enterprise Linux Mastery (RHEL Focus)

As our primary operating system environment, deep expertise in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is non-negotiable. Requirements include:

System Administration: Expert knowledge of RHEL 7, 8, and 9 internals, including LVM, systemd, GRUB, and advanced storage management.

Performance Tuning: Proficiency in kernel-level tuning, using tools such as tuned, top, iostat, vmstat, and perf to optimize workloads.

Security Hardening: Advanced implementation of SELinux (policy management, context troubleshooting) and system security protocols (Firewalld, IPTables, OpenSCAP).

Lifecycle Management: Proven experience with Red Hat Satellite , including Capsule management, Content Views, and automated patch scheduling via Subscription Manager.

3.2 Automation & Configuration Management

Ansible Expertise: Expert-level proficiency with Ansible Core and Ansible Automation Platform (Tower) . This includes architecting complex roles, utilizing Jinja2 templating, managing dynamic inventories, and developing custom Ansible modules to meet specific infrastructure needs.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Strong fami