Linux Systems Administrator

Date Posted: 02/01/2024
Req ID: 35855
Faculty/Division: Ofc of the Chief Information Officer
Department: Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00028447

Description:

About us:

The Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) group, part of the Information Technology Services (ITS) division, is responsible for campus core network, campus wireless, wide area network connectivity and internet connectivity for the University, including connectivity to research and education networks.

EIS is also responsible for services related to departmental network management, network, server and storage infrastructure, Windows and Linux servermanagement services, database and application integration and support, enterprise backup service, 24/7 operation of central administrative data centres and telecommunications services.

If you’re motivated and passionate about learning technologies and dedicated to improving experiences for today’s student, consider a career with us.

Your opportunity:

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) portfolio, operating as Information Technology Services (ITS), is home to over 200 IT professionals who provide University-wide IT services and systems to enable University of Toronto (U of T) to maintain its status as Canada’s leading institution of learning, discovery and knowledge creation. From direct support to enterprise-grade academic and administrative applications (student, financial, HR and research) to online learning, information security, collaboration tools and network infrastructure, our work enables U of T’s steadfast commitment to being an internationally significant research university with excellent undergraduate, graduate and professional programs.

ITS provides leadership and undertakes strategic and tactical initiatives to secure the greatest value from the University’s investment in IT. By strategically focusing on our people and working in collaboration with academic administrators, process owners and distributed IT service providers, ITS identifies technology opportunities and inefficiencies, and implementsservices and technology solutions to reduce complexity and improve aggregate IT experience of students, faculty and staff.

We are excited about the future as we focus our efforts, with broad input from our U of T community, on the development and execution of the IT@UofT strategic plan. We live our core values which shape our culture and guide our efforts – they include: service and operational excellence, creativity and critical thinking, culture of learning, shared leadership and teamwork.

Under the direction of the Manager, Systems Operations, the incumbent is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining operating systems and subsystem server software for divisional and enterprise partners. This includes development andupdate of architectural frameworks for such systems. Closely collaborating with partners, systems require analysis, troubleshooting, testing, and projecting future resource requirements.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing and implementing new operating systems and subsystems server software
• Analyzing, troubleshooting and testing highly complex systems
• Developing and updating architectural framework for highly complex and confidential university-wide IT systems
• Serving as a resource on specific issues to a group of specialists

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field or acceptable combination of education and experience.
• A minimum of five years relevant experience working in a complex Linux or Unix environment is required.
• Must have excellent technical skills, verbal and written skills with diverse partners throughout the University, technical peers, and management.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose complex technical problems on own and in collaboration with technical and non-technical team members, employing strong analytical skills. Ability to design, implement, and operate complexIT systems and tools  to manage such systems on own and in collaborative teams. Demonstrated strong documentation skills, and knowledge sharing.
• Strong organizational and time management skills to address competing tasks. Strong initiative, highly proactive. Ability to work independently, and in diverse collaborative teams.
• Strong skills and experience with Infrastructure as Code, software configuration management, & automation (e.g. Puppet/Ansible/Chef, Terraform, etc.), Git change management, CI/CD services such as Azure DevOps Pipelines or similar (e.g. Jenkins), server monitoring using Zabbix or similar, managing and analyzing server logs (e.g. Graylog), package management and dependency management using DNF/Yum over RPM or similar (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu APT/DPKG, Composer for PHP, etc.), and other Linux/Unix server system administrator tools.
• Thorough understanding of IP protocols and network applications such as ARP, DNS, VPNs, etc. particularly from a server management perspective, knowledge in cryptography and web/network security protocols, ability to solve remote network access issues to servers, managing access (e.g. Cisco Firewalls, iptables, Apache, and other application network access configurations), designing/configuring/troubleshooting load balancers (e.g. HaProxy), securing servers (e.g. Unix/Linux file access control, SELinux, etc.), analyzing server performance issues, diagnosing TLS certificate issues, etc.
• Expert scripting skills in languages such as Bash, Python, and/or Perl, and experience with SQL.
• Experience managing servers operating software such as Apache, MariaDB, Tomcat/OpenJDK/Java, Wordpress, Drupal, PHP applications, etc.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Experience prioritizing and managing requests within a help desk ticketing system (e.g. ServiceNow, JIRA, Zendesk, etc.) with many simultaneous open cases, following ITIL service desk principles.
• Experience with AlmaLinux or similar (e.g. CentOS, RHEL, Rocky Linux), server virtualization (e.g. VMWare), operating containers using Podman or Docker, generating/updating TLS certificates, operating MariaDB Galera clusters and other relational database configurations, SELinux, Jinja templating, configuring applications to use Shibboleth SSO, load testing tools (e.g. Apache Jmeter) for performance planning, experience scripting headless browsers with Selenium to validate operational status, orchestration systems (e.g. Kubernetes), resizing LVM partitions, etc.
• Experience managing resources in one of the public clouds (e.g. Azure, Amazon, etc.)
• Experience in a collaborative DevOps environment.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Meticulous
• Motivated self-learner
• Organized
• Resourceful
• Self-directed
• Team player

Closing Date: 02/20/2024, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW
Appointment Type: Budget - Continuing
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:
USW Pay Band 16 -- $99,548 with an annual step progression to a maximum of $127,305. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol.
Job Category: Information Technology (IT)
Recruiter: Khristen Sivaramalingam

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.