Senior Linux Administrator

Gaijin develops AAA-grade online games for PC, consoles and mobile platforms, including the popular MMO "War Thunder", "Enlisted" and other games.

We are looking for a Senior Linux Administrator to join our Infrastructure Team. Our team supports the internal ecosystem that powers development, testing, CI/CD, internal services, and various production/support systems. This is not a Build Engineer position; we have dedicated specialists for build logic. This role focuses on system administration, server reliability, automation, IaC, and the infrastructure surrounding development.

This is a senior-level role where you will have a significant impact on the infrastructure of a major game studio. We already have a powerful foundation: servers, virtualization, build/test farms, storage, networking, monitoring, backups, IaC, and internal tools. However, we don't view our infrastructure as "finished"—it can and should be made simpler, more reliable, transparent, convenient, and measurable.

Key Responsibilities:

• Linux Infrastructure Administration: Manage servers, services, access, updates, diagnostics, network settings, system issues, and incidents.
• Develop Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Define infrastructure through code, maintain host/role configurations, and manage changes via Git/Gerrit, code reviews, and CI.
• Migrate from SaltStack to Ansible: Participate in a large-scale, planned transition. This is not about "rewriting YAML for the sake of YAML," but an opportunity to co-design a modern IaC platform (inventory, roles, secrets, CI validation, rollout processes, and operational rules).
• Support Build/Test Farms: Maintain a large fleet of Windows, Linux, and macOS nodes (server-class configurations, GPU nodes, and specialized test environments). While the Build Team handles build logic, the Infrastructure Team ensures the fleet is reproducibly provisioned, available, monitored, and managed via IaC.
• Physical Infrastructure Management: Administer bare-metal servers, network equipment, disk arrays/shelves, shared storage for virtualization, IPMI/iDRAC, and data center environments.
• Storage Management: Work with iSCSI, multipath, LVM, and shared block storage. Handle latency diagnostics, clone/backup/restore integrity, and scheduled maintenance.
• Virtualization Support: Manage Proxmox, Linux VMs, network/storage dependencies, templates, provisioning, and operational procedures.
• CI/CD Infrastructure: Support Jenkins/Gerrit, agents, system dependencies, machine availability, monitoring, logs, and basic automation.
• Infrastructure Services: Support Docker, Nginx, DNS, VPN, monitoring, logging, and backup/restore for internal development teams.
• AWS Management: Operate a subset of servers in AWS, managing access, networking, security groups, and diagnostics.
• Internal Tooling Improvement: Maintain and improve engineering code in Gerrit (IaC, monitoring, backup tooling, access management, inventory, Jenkins integrations, and automation scripts).
• AI-Assisted Engineering: Use AI tools in daily work for code analysis, automation drafting, review, anomaly detection, and accelerating routine tasks. We value automation and support those who turn manual work into code.
• Architectural Improvements: Propose ways to make the infrastructure simpler and more observable. Reduce manual operations and transform recurring issues into automated checks or robust technical solutions.
• Transparent Task Management: Track statuses, raise blockers early, and discuss solutions openly with the team.

Our candidate should have:

• 5+ years of Linux system administration experience.

• Deep Linux knowledge: systemd, users/groups, permissions, storage, network stack, firewall, package management, logs, and performance troubleshooting.

• IaC/Configuration Management experience: SaltStack, Ansible, Puppet, or similar.

• Hardware experience: Operating bare metal, RAID/HBA, IPMI/iDRAC/iLO, and diagnosing hardware issues.

• Senior-level Storage understanding: Block devices, multipath, iSCSI, LVM, filesystems, and their impact on virtualization/services.

• Practical Networking: TCP/IP, VLAN, routing, NAT, firewalls, VPN, DNS, and diagnostics (tcpdump, ss, ip, dig, traceroute).

• Docker: Practical experience with container runtimes in an operational context.

• Scripting: Proficiency in Python or Shell for routine task automation.

• Git & Code Review: Experience with standard development workflows.

• Observability: Understanding of monitoring, alerting, logging, and incident response.

• Technical Leadership: Ability to propose architectural solutions, justify them, and see them through to production.

• Interest in AI-assisted engineering: Readiness to use modern AI tools to optimize the engineering process.

• English: Technical proficiency (reading documentation and technical correspondence).

A plus would be:

• Experience designing Ansible infrastructure (collections, secrets management, CI validation).

• Experience with Proxmox, oVirt, or VMware.

• Experience with Juniper/Dell or other networking hardware.

• In-depth knowledge of Jenkins/Gerrit (managing nodes, credentials, and system-level integrations).

• Experience supporting large-scale CI agent clusters.

• AWS experience (EC2, VPC, IAM, troubleshooting).

• Familiarity with Icinga, Grafana, Telegraf, Wazuh, or Bacula.

• Experience managing Windows/macOS within a Linux-centric infrastructure.

• Experience with CM migrations (specifically SaltStack to Ansible).

What We Offer:

• Scale: Support 200+ build/test nodes, including high-end AMD Threadripper setups, NVIDIA RTX GPU nodes, and Apple Silicon.

• Modern Culture: A live IaC environment where changes go through code review and CI. You will help build our new Ansible platform from the ground up.

• Innovation: We actively encourage using AI to reduce manual routine and improve code quality.

• Autonomy: No unnecessary bureaucracy. You have the freedom to influence technical decisions and improve processes for yourself and the team.

• Work Format: Full-time, Fully Remote

Who We Are Looking For:

We are seeking a Senior Engineer who is passionate about building infrastructure, not just maintaining it. We want someone who finds genuine satisfaction in simplifying complex systems: reducing manual tasks, writing cleaner code, improving monitoring, accelerating diagnostics, ensuring smoother rollouts, and building more resilient recovery processes.

We aren't looking for a "lone wolf." We value a strong engineer who takes ownership, proposes architectural solutions, communicates their ideas clearly, listens to feedback, and follows through until improvements are in production. Here, you will have the agency to influence our technical direction, choose your own approaches, and see firsthand how your decisions help the entire studio work faster and more efficiently.