{"id":3972211,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc","title":"Lead IT Systems Administrator (Linux & HPC)","company":{"id":4344,"name":"KBR","domain":"kbr.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/kbr","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":447,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.989,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":14,"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Leatherhead, United Kingdom","Bristol, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Bash","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"HPC","optional":false},{"name":"Least Privilege","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"MPI","optional":false},{"name":"Red Hat","optional":false},{"name":"SLURM","optional":false},{"name":"Ansible","optional":true},{"name":"C","optional":true},{"name":"Git","optional":true},{"name":"InfiniBand","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-09T16:34:22Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-09","last_verified_at":"2026-11-09T16:34:22Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Title:\nLead IT Systems Administrator (Linux & HPC)KBR is a global provider of differentiated, professional services and technologies delivered across a wide government, defense and industrial base. Drawing from its rich 100-year history and culture of innovation and mission focus, KBR creates sustainable value by combining engineering, technical and scientific expertise with its full life cycle capabilities to help our clients meet their most pressing challenges today and into the future.\nWe deliver science, technology and engineering solutions to governments and companies around the world. KBR employs approximately 37,000 people worldwide with customers in more than 80 countries and operations in over 29 countries. KBR is proud to work with its customers across the globe to provide technology, value-added services, and long-term operations and maintenance services to ensure consistent delivery with predictable results. At KBR, We Deliver.\nThe Opportunity:\nThe Lead IT Systems Administrator (Linux & HPC) is responsible for the administration, maintenance, security and operational reliability of Linux-based enterprise and high-performance computing platforms. The role provides hands-on technical ownership while coordinating and supervising the daily technical activities of colleagues supporting Linux and HPC services, setting priorities and helping ensure operational commitments are met.\nA major focus will be the operation of cloud and co-located HPC platforms. The position requires extensive Linux engineering experience and practical knowledge of HPC environments, including NVIDIA Base Command Manager, Azure CycleCloud and SLURM. The role leads team members on projects and changes with notable risk and complexity, provides direction and guidance, and develops or implements processes and procedures where needed. Decisions and problem-solving are guided by organisational policies, procedures and business plans, with guidance and oversight from the manager.\nKey Responsibilities\nLinux Systems Administration\nAdminister, configure, patch, harden and upgrade enterprise Linux server platforms, with particular emphasis on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or comparable distributions.\nManage core Linux services including identity and access integration, SSH, DNS client configuration, time synchronisation, software repositories, filesystems, logging and scheduled services.\nAutomate repeatable administration using shell scripting and configuration-management or orchestration tooling.\nMonitor Linux performance, availability, capacity and security, and resolve complex operating-system and application integration issues.\nMaintain build standards, technical documentation, operational procedures and recovery runbooks.\nHPC Platform & Workload Scheduling\nOperate and support HPC clusters spanning management, login, compute and storage components.\nAdminister SLURM, including queues and partitions, scheduling policies, job submission, accounting, fair-share, reservations and troubleshooting failed or poorly performing workloads.\nSupport NVIDIA Base Command Manager and Azure CycleCloud for cluster provisioning, node lifecycle management, monitoring and integration with SLURM.\nWork with engineering and scientific users to diagnose job, compiler, library, MPI, resource-allocation and performance issues.\nPlan and execute maintenance activities while protecting service availability and active workloads.\nCompute, Storage & Infrastructure Integration\nAdminister physical and virtual server infrastructure and support hardware lifecycle, firmware and operating-system maintenance.\nSupport Cisco compute infrastructure and its integration with Linux and HPC management services.\nOperate and support NetApp file and data services used by Linux and HPC platforms, including provisioning, permissions, capacity, performance and availability.\nApply a working understanding of high-speed networking, IP addressing, routing, DNS, NFS, network dependencies and storage connectivity to end-to-end troubleshooting.\nCollaborate with network, security, application and storage specialists, vendors and service providers to resolve cross-domain incidents.\nSecurity, Resilience & Operational Support\nApply secure configuration, least privilege, vulnerability remediation and audit controls to Linux and HPC systems.\nEnsure backup, restore and disaster-recovery requirements are defined, implemented and regularly tested for supported platforms.\nMonitor service health and capacity, respond to incidents, identify root cause and contribute to problem management.\nPlan and deliver changes through established change-management processes, including risk assessment, testing, implementation and back-out planning.\nParticipate in an appropriate operational support or on-call arrangement where required.\nProvide technical guidance, peer review and knowledge transfer to infrastructure colleagues and service-desk teams.\nDevelop, implement and continuously improve Linux and HPC operational processes, procedures, standards and controls in response to service, security and business requirements.\nProvide day-to-day technical direction, peer review, coaching and knowledge transfer to infrastructure colleagues and service-desk teams, escalating resource or priority conflicts to the manager where required.\nQualifications, Skills and Experience\nEssential Technical Skills & Experience\nSubstantial hands-on experience administering Linux in a complex enterprise or research-computing environment.\nPractical experience supporting HPC clusters and diagnosing issues across compute, scheduler, storage and network layers.\nStrong operational knowledge of SLURM administration and workload troubleshooting.\nCompetence in Bash or another relevant scripting language, with a track record of automating administrative tasks.\nExperience with Linux performance analysis, capacity management, patching, security hardening and vulnerability remediation.\nExperience operating shared file services and troubleshooting NFS, permissions, throughput, latency and capacity issues.\nWorking knowledge of enterprise networking fundamentals and distributed-system dependencies.\nExperience delivering controlled technical change and maintaining accurate documentation in a structured IT service-management environment.\nDesirable Technical Skills & Experience\nExperience with NVIDIA Base Command Manager, Bright Cluster Manager or a comparable HPC cluster-management platform.\nExperience with Cisco compute platforms and associated server-management tooling.\nExperience administering NetApp storage in Linux or HPC environments.\nKnowledge of InfiniBand or other high-speed, low-latency fabrics.\nExperience with MPI workloads, environment modules, compilers, engineering or scientific applications, and common HPC software stacks.\nExperience with Ansible, Git and infrastructure-as-code practices.\nExperience with virtualisation, containers or cloud-hosted Linux workloads.\nKnowledge of backup, recovery, monitoring and observability platforms used in enterprise infrastructure.\nProfessional Capability\nExperience operating as a senior or lead technical professional, coordinating the daily work of others, setting priorities and ensuring operational tasks are completed.\nDemonstrated ability to lead complex troubleshooting, projects and service changes with notable risk, using policies, procedures and business plans to guide decisions and escalation.\nAble to translate business and service objectives into clear technical priorities, provide direction and guidance, and communicate effectively with specialists, non-specialists, managers and stakeholders.\nStrong operational leadership, sound judgement and accountability for secure, reliable and supportable services, including the ability to balance delivery, risk, capacity and customer impact.\nCollaborative leadership approach with evidence of coaching colleagues, supervising technical activity and developing or implementing improved processes and procedures.\nEducation & Qualifications\nBachelor's degree in computing, engineering or a related field with typically 5+ years of relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of professional training and substantial practical experience.\nRelevant Linux, HPC, Cisco, NVIDIA or NetApp certifications are advantageous but not essential.\nPhysical Requirements\nAll employees have a responsibility to work safety and to abide by health and safety legislation and policies.\nKBR Company Information\nWhen you become part of the KBR team, your opportunities are endless. Through collaboration with our customers, we’re defining tomorrow’s challenges, then providing the solutions and services to overcome those challenges, always maintaining our commitment to total safety and reliability.\nAt KBR, we partner with government and industry clients to provide purposeful and comprehensive solutions with an emphasis on efficiency and safety. With a full portfolio of services, proprietary technologies and expertise, our employees are ready to handle projects and missions throughout their entire lifecycle, from planning and design to sustainability and maintenance. Whether at the bottom of the ocean or in outer space, our clients trust us to deliver the impossible on a daily basis.\nWorking at KBR means being rewarded for your contributions. In addition to competitive benefits and professional development, our people are empowered to use all their potential, creating meaningful change for themselves and our clients. We attract the best minds in the world because our expertise thrives on creativity, resourcefulness and collaboration. That is how we supply our clients with cutting-edge solutions and services.\nAs the needs of the world change, we’re ready to respond and guide the way forward with strategic, sustainable, and technological advancements grounded in more than a century of practical application and execution.\n#LI-EF1","description_format":"text","description_chars":9921,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military Logistics","Space Services","Engineering Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-09T16:34:22Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":14,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-09T19:14:29Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-09T19:14:29Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4842,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-10T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4344},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4344"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fkbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fkbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fkbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/kbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fkbr-lead-it-systems-administrator-linux-hpc"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3972211}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"kbr.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3972211},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}