Lead Linux Platform Engineer

About the role

We manage a fleet of over 1,000 high‑performance Linux workstations that support engineering, machine‑learning, and research teams. We are looking for a Lead Linux Platform Engineer to own the end‑to‑end platform that provisions, configures, secures, and maintains these machines at scale.

Key responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical architecture for fleet management, including configuration management, provisioning, inventory, patching, network access, and security.
• Own the Puppet (or OpenVox) codebase, establishing module design, role‑and‑profile patterns, and Hiera data architecture.
• Design and operate a scalable bare‑metal provisioning pipeline (PXE/iPXE, unattended OS installation) that hands off to configuration management.
• Integrate the workstation fleet with network access control (802.1X), managing device certificates and provisioning‑time access mechanisms.
• Define hardware tiers, validate new models (CPUs, GPUs, storage, peripherals) for Linux compatibility, and manage the hardware lifecycle.
• Collaborate directly with faculty and researchers to translate research requirements into sustainable platform solutions.

Required profile

• Proven experience leading large‑scale Linux infrastructure projects.
• Strong background in configuration management tools such as Puppet or similar.
• Hands‑on expertise with network‑boot provisioning technologies (PXE, iPXE) and automated OS installation.
• Experience integrating workstations with NAC solutions (802.1X) and managing device certificates.
• Ability to work autonomously, set engineering standards, and mentor a growing team.

Required skills

• Linux operating systems
• Puppet (or OpenVox)
• Hiera data architecture
• PXE / iPXE
• Unattended OS installation
• 802.1X network access control
• Device certificate enrollment
• Hardware validation for Linux