Freelance Linux System Engineer Jobs Near Me

The Opportunity

Location Requirement: This position operates on a hybrid schedule (3 days in-office, 2 days remote). Candidates must be within 45 minutes of an office and able to regularly commute to work as required. This is not a fully remote opportunity.

At WOW! we're building and evolving the infrastructure that powers critical business and customer-facing technologies - and we're looking for a Principal

Engineer, Linux & Virtualization Infrastructure to help lead that transformation.

This is a highly visible engineering role within our enterprise infrastructure organization, supporting multiple datacenters and environments while driving the design, architecture, implementation, and optimization of modern infrastructure solutions. You'll play a key role in both greenfield deployments and the evolution of existing production environments, helping ensure our platforms remain scalable, resilient, secure, and future-ready.

What WOW! Offers

• Base salaryup to $175,000 annually, commensurate with experience, plus short-term incentive plan, and comprehensive benefits including:

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance

  • 401(k) with company match

  • Paid time off & company holidays

  • Tuition reimbursement for continued development

  • Employee broadband discounts

What You'll Do

As a Principal Engineer, you will be responsible for the management and evolution of compute, storage, and virtualization platforms across the enterprise.

Core Responsibilities

• Design and configure greenfield datacenter deployments while modernizing and retrofitting existing environments

• Lead system integration efforts for new technologies and infrastructure solutions through research, design, implementation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance

• Maintain and manage multiple virtualization clusters with ownership of current and future capacity planning

• Monitor enterprise infrastructure platforms and drive actionable recovery and operational improvements

• Co-manage Fibre Channel, VxLAN, and NAS environments with a continued focus on:

  • Fault tolerance

  • High availability

  • Disaster recovery

• Analyze user and application requirements to determine operating system, storage, memory, and CPU needs for both physical and virtual server environments

• Lead the design, analysis, configuration, and implementation of enterprise storage architectures, including:

  • Application and end-user storage requirements

  • IO performance analysis

  • Storage layout strategy

  • Disaster recovery profiles

• Collaborate closely with networking and security teams to deliver solutions for internal business units and external customers

• Ensure all service platforms and applications are backed up according to established policies and procedures

• Participate in future technology strategy discussions and provide recommendations based on industry research and engineering expertise

Additional Responsibilities

In this role, you will also:

• Serve as an engineering-level escalation resource for the Network Operations Center (NOC) and operational teams during high-level fault analysis and incident isolation

• Lead the deployment and configuration of high availability systems and storage architectures

• Partner with cross-functional engineering teams on emerging technologies and infrastructure initiatives

• Create and maintain detailed systems and application documentation

• Provide professional technical support to both internal and external customers

• Maintain, enhance, and deploy hardware and software technologies within lab and testing environments

• Mentor and support fellow engineers and technical team members

• Perform additional duties as assigned

What You Bring

Required Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience

• 7+ years of experience as a Linux Systems Administrator, Linux Systems Engineer, or related infrastructure engineering role

• Expertise with Linux and/or Unix operating systems

• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals

• Solid knowledge of Storage Area Networks (SANs)

• Experience with virtualization and containerization technologies including:

  • VMware

  • ProxMox

  • Docker

  • Kubernetes

• Experience managing complex systems infrastructure projects

• Working knowledge of Windows operating systems and Microsoft Office applications

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment

• Ability to collaborate effectively across diverse technical teams

• Strong independent problem-solving and decision-making skills

Physical Demands & Working Conditions

• Regularly required to communicate verbally and in writing

• Frequent use of hands for typing, handling equipment, and managing documentation

• Ability to lift up to 50 pounds

• Requires close vision and the ability to focus

• Participation in on-call rotations, including occasional overnight and weekend support

• Occasional travel may be required

Why Join WOW!?

At WOW!, you'll work alongside talented engineers solving large-scale infrastructure challenges while helping shape the future of enterprise technology. We value innovation, collaboration, operational excellence, and continuous improvement - and we empower our teams to make meaningful contributions that drive the business forward.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment
without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran