Sr Unix Systems Admin

Senior UNIX Systems Administrator
Location: Remote – U.S.
Employment Type: Full-Time, Direct Hire
Salary: $110-150K based on experience
About the Role
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior UNIX Systems Administrator with deep expertise in commercial UNIX environments. This is not a Linux-focused position where UNIX is a secondary or legacy skill.

The ideal candidate has spent significant time working hands-on with AIX, Solaris, and/or HP-UX in complex production environments and is comfortable troubleshooting difficult issues independently. This position will support customers dealing with challenging infrastructure problems, so we need someone who can quickly diagnose issues, explain solutions, and work directly within customer environments.

Candidates should have deep hands-on production expertise in at least two of the following platforms: AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris.
What You’ll Do

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex UNIX infrastructure and operating system issues.
• Provide hands-on technical support across customer environments.
• Diagnose issues involving storage, networking, boot/recovery, clustering, performance, filesystems, and OS configuration.
• Work directly with customers during technical escalations and communicate solutions clearly.
• Implement fixes and configuration changes rather than functioning solely in an advisory capacity.
• Participate in a limited on-call rotation for critical escalations.
• Work with physical and virtual UNIX lab environments for testing, troubleshooting, and issue reproduction.
• Continue expanding technical knowledge across multiple UNIX platforms.
• Periodically share technical expertise through internal or customer-facing technical sessions.

Technical Expertise
AIX / IBM UNIX

Strong experience may include AIX system administration, LVM, JFS/JFS2, PowerHA/HACMP, NIM, ODM, WPARs, networking, system diagnostics, performance troubleshooting, boot/recovery, and command-line administration.

Solaris / Sun-Oracle UNIX

Strong experience may include Solaris administration, ZFS, Zones, SMF, SPARC systems, SVM or Veritas Volume Manager, networking, package/patch management, system diagnostics, boot environments, hardware troubleshooting, and LDoms.

HP-UX

Strong experience may include HP-UX administration, LVM, Veritas Volume Manager, Serviceguard, Ignite-UX, networking, kernel tuning, software/package administration, boot/recovery, and hardware/firmware interaction.

The original role specifically expects advanced platform-level knowledge across areas such as clustering, storage, networking, boot processes and diagnostics—not simply familiarity with the operating systems.
Additional UNIX Skills

• Advanced shell scripting using Bash, KornShell and/or Bourne shell.
• Strong command-line text processing and log analysis.
• SAN/storage concepts including multipathing, zoning and LUN management.
• NFS and SMB/CIFS administration and troubleshooting.
• Advanced TCP/IP and network troubleshooting.
• LDAP/Active Directory integration, PAM and/or Kerberos.
• UNIX security hardening, vulnerability remediation and patching.
• Strong understanding of UNIX boot processes and system recovery.

These cross-platform skills are specifically required by the underlying role.
Background We’re Particularly Interested In
We are especially interested in candidates who bring one or more of the following:

• Experience providing advanced/escalation-level UNIX support within a major technology vendor or enterprise support organization.
• Previous experience as a Principal Systems Administrator, Principal Systems Engineer, Senior Systems Engineer, or equivalent technical SME.
• A genuine passion for UNIX infrastructure demonstrated through a personal/home lab, virtualization environment, legacy hardware, emulation, or other hands-on technical projects outside of work.
• Experience supporting multiple customers or environments where you were expected to answer complex technical questions and troubleshoot issues in real time.

Nice to Have
Experience with additional or legacy UNIX platforms, UNIX emulation/virtualization, advanced enterprise storage, IBM Power hardware, SPARC environments, or scripting/programming beyond shell is highly valued.
What We’re Looking For
This role is best suited for someone who has spent years living and breathing commercial UNIX. We need someone who can speak confidently and in depth about the environments they have supported and who remains technically sharp on the platforms today.

Candidates whose recent experience is primarily Linux with limited historical exposure to commercial UNIX are unlikely to be a fit. The position requires someone capable of independently handling complex production issues without significant ramp-up or mentorship.

U.S.-based candidates only. Full-time direct-hire opportunity.