Senior Linux System Engineer Jobs in Boston, MA (NOW HIRING)

About Northern Light

Northern Light provides the world's most sophisticated machine learning-powered competitive intelligence platform for market research. For over 25 years, we've been helping Fortune 1000 enterprises make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions through our award-winning SinglePoint knowledge management platform. Our clients include global leaders across technology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and life sciences who depend on us to transform fragmented data into strategic clarity.

We're a company that takes pride in our compulsive drive to provide exceptional client support. We wake up each day ready to tackle the challenges of knowledge management and we never stand still. Our recent innovations include generative AI capabilities, machine learning insights, and advanced competitive intelligence automation.

About the Role

Northern Light is seeking an experienced Senior Linux Infrastructure Engineer to take hands-on ownership of our Linux-based infrastructure. In this role, youll be responsible for operating, maintaining, and evolving a mission-critical environment that runs on a mix of bare-metal and virtualized systems in our private colocation datacenter.

This is a highly technical, hands-on position for someone who enjoys working close to the hardware, values operational excellence, and thrives in environments where reliability, security, and scalability matter.

What Youll Do

• Operate and maintain a Linux infrastructure of ~70 HPE DL360 Gen9/Gen10 bare-metal servers and ~150 virtual machines
• Administer RHEL-based systems (primarily Oracle Linux 9), including installation, patching, upgrades, and security hardening
• Support virtualization platforms, including:
  • VMware (5 nodes, ~100 VMs), with potential future migration to Red Hat OVE
  • KVM-based virtualization supporting Kubernetes workloads (~50 VMs)
• Perform on-site datacenter operations in a private six-rack cage, including racking, cabling, labeling, hardware replacement, and decommissioning
• Maintain and administer core infrastructure services such as:
  • Mail relay (Sendmail)
  • DNS (BIND)
  • SFTP (ProFTPd)
  • LDAP-backed authentication and authorization
  • Package repository mirroring (Foreman)
  • Centralized automation and orchestration (Ansible Automation Platform)
  • On-prem GitLab Premium for version control and CI/CD
• Develop and maintain standard operating procedures covering:
  • Inventory management (NetBox)
  • Monitoring, alerting, and observability (LogicMonitor)
  • Incident response and root-cause analysis
  • Vulnerability and patch management (Tenable One)
  • Backup, recovery, and disaster recovery (Veeam)
• Participate in incident response, scheduled maintenance, and post-incident reviews
• Collaborate with vendors, service providers, and internal engineering, security, and operations teams
• Support secure, compliant infrastructure that enables product delivery and business needs

What Were Looking For:

• We're looking for someone with 7+ years of Linux systems engineering experience, including at least 3 years as the primary owner of infrastructure at scale not a contributor on a team, but the person accountable for uptime, security, and reliability. RHEL-based distributions are required; Oracle Linux 9 is strongly preferred
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience
• Demonstrated ability to manage the full server lifecycle end-to-end: OS installation and hardening, configuration management, patching cadence, capacity planning, and decommissioning
• Deep proficiency with Linux system internals: kernel tuning, systemd service management, storage subsystems (LVM, RAID, NFS/NAS), and network stack configuration (bonding, VLANs, firewall rules via firewalld/iptables)
• Proven experience designing and maintaining high-availability and redundant architectures in production not just operating them
• Direct, hands-on experience with HPE ProLiant (or equivalent enterprise) servers, including iLO/IPMI management, firmware updates, hardware diagnostics, and component replacement
• Experience performing all physical datacenter tasks independently: rack and stack, structured cabling, labeling, power management, and hardware lifecycle tracking in a private colo or equivalent environment
• Production-level administration of VMware vSphere/ESXi environments (vCenter, VM lifecycle, resource pools, snapshots, HA/DRS) and KVM-based virtualization (libvirt, virt-manager, bridged/NAT networking); experience supporting platform migrations (e.g., VMware to open-source hypervisors) is a strong plus
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining Ansible playbooks and roles for configuration management, OS hardening, and orchestrated change deployment not just running existing playbooks
• Demonstrated experience administering production DNS (BIND), LDAP-backed authentication, mail relay, and SFTP services including troubleshooting, zone management, schema modifications, and integration with downstream systems
• Experience managing on-prem package repository infrastructure (Foreman or equivalent) and enforcing controlled patching workflows across a large server fleet
• Hands-on experience with enterprise monitoring and alerting platforms (LogicMonitor, Zabbix, Nagios, or equivalent), including building meaningful alerting thresholds and dashboards; active experience with vulnerability management tools (Tenable, Qualys, or equivalent): scan interpretation, remediation prioritization, and patch compliance tracking
• Experience owning backup and disaster recovery operations end-to-end: policy design, Veeam (or equivalent) administration, recovery testing, and DR runbook maintenance
• Track record of leading incident response, conducting post-mortems, and producing root-cause analyses with lasting corrective actions; strong technical documentation discipline (SOPs, runbooks, infrastructure diagrams) and ability to communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes
• Solid networking fundamentals with hands-on experience collaborating with network teams on switches, firewalls, and load balancers; sufficient depth to independently scope and escalate network-adjacent infrastructure issues
• On-site presence required at a private colocation facility in Somerville, MA; datacenter work may involve elevated noise levels and variable temperatures; limited after-hours or weekend maintenance (historically ~35 times per year)

Job Type:Full-Time

Work authorization requirements:

Must be authorized to work in the United States (unfortunately, we cannot sponsor visas).

Location: Must be local to Boston/Somerville area, with shared on-site presence required between the office and a Somerville-based colocation data center

Why Join Northern Light

• Join a company shaping the future of competitive and market intelligence.
• Work with a collaborative, high-performing team that values creativity, experimentation, and measurable results.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and professional growth opportunities.
• Opportunity to build something from the ground up.
• Regular team offsites and opportunities for cross-functional collaboration.

Working at Northern Light
Northern Light is based in Boston.Northern Light is proud to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Northern Light is an E-Verify participant.
It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.