Shift Lead (Linux)

Role Summary

We are looking for a Shift Lead to run our 24/7 Operations team on a rotational basis. You will be the first point of command during your shift, owning monitoring, incident response, escalations, and handovers for Linux-based production systems. You will guide a team of operations engineers, keep services stable, and ensure incidents are resolved within SLA with clear communication to stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Shift Leadership

• Lead and coordinate the shift team, assigning work and prioritising tickets, alerts, and incidents.
• Run structured shift handovers, ensuring open incidents, risks, and pending changes are clearly documented.
• Act as the escalation point for L1/L2 engineers and make timely decisions during live incidents.
• Mentor and coach team members; support onboarding, training, and skills development.

Incident and Problem Management

• Monitor dashboards and alerts, triage events, and drive incidents through detection, resolution, and closure.
• Manage major incidents: coordinate bridge calls, assign roles, provide regular updates to stakeholders, and escalate to engineering or management as needed.
• Contribute to post-incident reviews and root cause analysis, and track follow-up actions to completion.

Linux Operations

• Perform first- and second-line troubleshooting on Linux servers (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux), covering CPU, memory, disk, network, and service issues.
• Manage users, permissions, services (systemd), cron jobs, log analysis, and package updates.
• Support patching, reboots, and routine maintenance using approved change procedures.
• Write and maintain Bash scripts and runbooks to automate repetitive operational tasks.

Monitoring and Service Management

• Work with monitoring tools (e.g., CloudWatch, Nagios, Zabbix, Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog) to tune alerts and reduce noise.
• Follow ITIL practices for incident, change, and problem management using a ticketing tool (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira Service Management).
• Track SLA/KPI performance and report on shift activity, trends, and improvement opportunities.

Process and Continuous Improvement

• Maintain and improve runbooks, SOPs, and knowledge base articles.
• Identify automation opportunities and work with engineering teams to reduce manual toil.
• Ensure compliance with security, access, and change control policies.

Required Skills and Experience

• 7+ years in IT operations, NOC, or infrastructure support, including experience in a 24/7 environment.
• Prior experience as a shift lead, team lead, or senior operations engineer.
• Strong hands-on Linux administration skills: command line, file systems, LVM, networking (DNS, TCP/IP, firewalls), SSH, systemd, and log analysis.
• Solid troubleshooting skills with the ability to stay calm and decisive under pressure.
• Experience handling major incidents and running bridge calls.
• Working knowledge of ITIL processes (incident, problem, change management).
• Experience with monitoring and alerting tools and ticketing systems.
• Scripting skills in Bash and/or Python.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, including clear stakeholder updates and handover documentation.
• Willingness to work rotational shifts, nights, weekends, and holidays.