Freelance Linux System Engineer Jobs in California

Title: System Engineer I
Location: Los Angeles, CA (hybrid)
Duration: 12+ month contract until 07/09/2027 (with possible extensions)
Compensation: $60.63 - $78.90/hour
Work Requirements: , or Authorized to work in the U.S. 
Job Summary:
As a System Engineer I, you will help operate, support, and improve the enterprise infrastructure that enables our employees, developers, and business teams across the region. You will gain hands-on experience across Windows and Linux systems, identity services, virtualization, storage, backup, monitoring, endpoint, cloud, SaaS, and automation platforms while partnering closely with other engineers and global IT teams.
In this role, you will support the day-to-day health, reliability, security, and continuous improvement of the organization''s enterprise technology environment. You will troubleshoot infrastructure issues, assist with provisioning and configuration, contribute to automation and documentation, participate in infrastructure projects, and help deliver technology solutions aligned with the company''s global standards.
You will be expected to learn quickly, communicate clearly, execute consistently, and contribute to operational excellence while growing your technical depth across enterprise infrastructure, cloud platforms, and automation.
Responsibilities

• Support the operation, monitoring, maintenance, and continuous improvement of enterprise infrastructure systems, including compute, storage, identity, virtualization, endpoint, cloud, backup, and SaaS platforms.
• Assist with installing, configuring, provisioning, and maintaining Windows Server, Linux systems, virtual machines, and related infrastructure across platforms such as VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, or similar technologies.
• Support core infrastructure services such as Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, identity services, access controls, authentication platforms, and related enterprise services.
• Assist with storage, backup, and recovery operations, including capacity awareness, basic troubleshooting, scheduled backups, validation checks, restore testing, and recovery documentation.
• Monitor infrastructure health, performance, capacity, availability, logs, and alerts using existing monitoring and observability tools, escalating issues when appropriate.
• Troubleshoot and resolve infrastructure incidents in partnership with engineers, vendors, internal partners, and global support teams.
• Follow established security standards by applying access controls, system hardening guidance, patching practices, and infrastructure configuration standards.
• Use scripting and automation tools to improve repeatable operational tasks, support infrastructure lifecycle workflows, reduce manual effort, and improve consistency.
• Maintain accurate documentation for systems, operational procedures, configurations, support processes, recovery procedures, and infrastructure standards.
• Collaborate with the organization''s global IT and infrastructure teams on projects, upgrades, migrations, maintenance activities, incident reviews, change activities, on-call support, and service improvements.

• Bachelor''s degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 2+ years of experience in systems administration, infrastructure engineering, IT operations, enterprise technology support, or a similar technical role.
• Working knowledge of Windows Server and/or Linux systems administration in an enterprise environment.
• Understanding of core infrastructure services such as Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, identity services, access management, and authentication platforms.
• Familiarity with enterprise infrastructure concepts, including compute, storage, virtualization, identity, networking, backup, security, monitoring, and cloud services.
• Experience supporting or administering one or more enterprise technologies such as Active Directory, VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, endpoint platforms, storage platforms, backup platforms, or SaaS applications.
• Basic understanding of networking concepts such as TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, HTTP/S, routing, switching, VPNs, and firewalls.
• Foundational knowledge of virtualization, storage, backup, and recovery concepts such as virtual machines, RAID, NAS, SAN, scheduled backups, incremental or differential backups, and restore validation.
• Experience troubleshooting infrastructure, systems, application, or service issues using monitoring, alerting, logging, or IT service management tools.
• Working knowledge of scripting or automation using tools such as PowerShell, Python, Bash, Ansible, or similar technologies, with strong documentation, communication, collaboration, and operational follow-through.

• Hands-on experience with AWS services such as EC2, IAM, S3, VPC, Systems Manager, CloudWatch, Backup, or CloudFormation.
• Exposure to infrastructure automation, provisioning, configuration management, CI/CD, version control, or Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo CD, or Git.
• Experience supporting enterprise identity and access platforms such as Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, or similar systems.
• Familiarity with centralized logging, monitoring, observability, reporting, or IT service management platforms such as CloudWatch, Splunk, Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, ELK, or similar tools.
• Exposure to backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, infrastructure resilience, compliance, audit, vulnerability management, infrastructure security reviews, or security operations practices.
• Experience working in a global enterprise environment with distributed teams, vendors, and cross-functional partners; interest in gaming, game development, or supporting creative and technical teams.