System Security Engineer

Job Title: Senior Linux Platform Engineer – Red Hat, IPA Vault and Kubernetes

Department: Security Engineering

Reports To: Manager

Location: Bangalore, India

About the Team/Department:

The Infrastructure and Security Engineering team is responsible for building, securing, automating, and supporting enterprise Linux platforms and cloud-native infrastructure. The team manages Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions, identity and access services using IPA/FreeIPA, secrets and certificate management through IPA Vault, and Kubernetes-based platforms supporting production workloads.

Position Summary

We are looking for an experienced Linux Platform Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, all major Linux distributions, IPA/FreeIPA, IPA Vault, and Kubernetes. The resource will be responsible for Linux platform administration, identity and access integration, secrets and certificate lifecycle support, automation, troubleshooting, hardening, and operational support for business-critical infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer, maintain, patch, upgrade, and troubleshoot Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux server environments.
• Manage Linux services, storage, networking, LVM, filesystems, systemd, kernel parameters, SSH, DNS, NTP, and performance tuning.
• Implement Linux security hardening, access controls, patch compliance, vulnerability remediation, and audit readiness.
• Configure and support IPA/FreeIPA services including users, groups, hosts, HBAC rules, sudo rules, Kerberos, LDAP, certificates, and access policies.
• Support IPA Vault usage for secure storage, retrieval, sharing, and lifecycle management of secrets, keys, passwords, and certificates.
• Administer Kubernetes environments including cluster health, namespaces, workloads, RBAC, secrets, config maps, storage, networking, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
• Automate repetitive administration tasks using shell scripting, Ansible, Python, or equivalent automation tools.
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, change implementation, operational documentation, and 24x7 support as required.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on Linux administration experience in enterprise production environments.
• Strong experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration, patching, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and system hardening.
• Working knowledge of multiple Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, or Oracle Linux.
• Hands-on experience with IPA/FreeIPA identity management, Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, certificates, sudo rules, and host enrollment.
• Practical understanding of IPA Vault or equivalent secrets management for passwords, keys, and certificates.
• Experience administering Kubernetes clusters, workloads, RBAC, secrets, storage, networking, and troubleshooting application or infrastructure issues.
• Strong scripting and automation skills using Bash, Ansible, Python, or similar tools.
• Good understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, SSH, TLS certificates, firewalls, load balancers, monitoring, logging, and ITIL/ITSM processes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or equivalent certification.
• Experience with Red Hat Satellite, OpenShift, HashiCorp Vault, Helm, container runtimes, CI/CD pipelines, and GitOps practices.
• Experience integrating Linux platforms with enterprise IAM, PAM, LDAP, SSO, certificate authorities, and centralized logging solutions.
• Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Loki, or similar platforms.
• Experience working in cloud or hybrid infrastructure environments such as AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, or OpenStack.

Core Competencies

• Deep technical troubleshooting and analytical problem-solving across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linux services, Kubernetes platforms, and identity infrastructure.
• Strong ownership mindset for production stability, security compliance, platform availability, and operational excellence.
• Hands-on execution capability with system administration, incident response, root cause analysis, patching, hardening, upgrades, and change implementation.
• Security-first approach to access management, secrets handling, certificate lifecycle management, privileged access, and audit readiness.
• Automation and standardization mindset with ability to reduce manual effort using scripting, Ansible, repeatable runbooks, and reusable operational procedures.
• Strong understanding of identity, authentication, authorization, Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, TLS, RBAC, and Linux access control models.
• Cloud-native operational awareness for Kubernetes workloads, namespaces, secrets, storage, networking, monitoring, and platform resilience.
• Ability to document architecture standards, SOPs, troubleshooting guides, change plans, and production support runbooks clearly.
• Effective communication and collaboration with security, infrastructure, application, vendor, operations, and leadership stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently, prioritize incidents and service requests, manage multiple technical priorities, and support high-pressure production situations.
• Continuous improvement mindset aligned with automation, reliability engineering, secure-by-design practices, cost optimization, and service quality improvement.
• Customer-oriented approach with focus on responsiveness, clear updates, service reliability, and stakeholder satisfaction.

RAKUTEN SHUGI PRINCIPLES:

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviours that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

• Always improve, always advance. Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen.
• Be passionately professional. Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best.
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika. Use the Rakuten Cycle to success in unknown territory.
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to see their customers smile.
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team.