Lead Linux System Administrator

Nekki is a game development studio,the creator of Shadow Fight Arena,Shadow Fight 3,Shadow Fight 2, 11×11, and Vector. The total number of registered users for our games exceeds 1 billion worldwide. We develop and release games for PC,consoles, andmobile platforms.

We are looking for a Lead Linux System Administrator to lead a distributed team of 3-4 system administrators and one L1 support engineer. This is a hands-on role combining people management, technical leadership, and direct involvement in complex infrastructure work.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop the team: set priorities, plan work, mentor team members, conduct one-to-one meetings and performance reviews, and participate in hiring and onboarding.
• Ensure that the team maintains reliable production and internal infrastructure, including monitoring, logging, backups, and disaster recovery.
• Define and maintain infrastructure security practices, including access management, system hardening, and patching.
• Oversee the timely handling of infrastructure incidents, escalations, and internal support requests.
• Plan and deliver infrastructure improvements, migrations, and capacity expansion.
• Operate and improve internal engineering services, and automate routine operations using Bash and Ansible.
• Coordinate infrastructure work with project teams and the DevOps team.

Requirements:

• Experience managing a system administration or infrastructure team, including performance management and work prioritization.
• Strong technical leadership and senior-level hands-on Linux administration skills, preferably with RHEL, CentOS, or AlmaLinux.
• Strong knowledge of networking and production troubleshooting.
• Strong Bash and Ansible skills.
• Experience administering PostgreSQL in production.
• Experience operating and securing production infrastructure, including monitoring, backups, access management, patching, and incident response.
• Ability to take ownership, make technical decisions, and communicate clearly within a distributed team.

Our technology landscape

We do not expect candidates to have experience with every technology listed below. Experience with several of these areas will be an advantage.

• Cloud and hosting: AWS, Tencent Cloud, and dedicated servers hosted at OVH and Hetzner.
• Virtualization, containers, and storage: Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, Docker, and ZFS.
• Databases: PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, and a small number of MySQL services.
• Monitoring and logging: Zabbix, Grafana, Percona Monitoring and Management, Graylog, and Elasticsearch.
• Identity and access: Keycloak, OpenZiti, and Google Workspace.
• Content delivery: Akamai and other CDN providers.
• Engineering services: TeamCity, GitLab, Perforce, Jira, and Confluence.
• Application environments: primarily Java-based game backends, plus some Python and PHP services.

We offer:

• A great team with a friendly, informal work environment where we share interests, play video games together, and organize internal events (game jams, tournaments, and meetups)

• Opportunities for professional development, including participation in specialized conferences and educational events

• Work remotely from anywhere. Working hours: 10 AM - 7 PM (GMT+3, including a 1-hour break), with the option to adjust

• Support for personal growth: English courses, psychologist sessions and various educational programs

• Internal coins you can collect and exchange for unique merch in our store

If you don’t hear from us within 7-10 days, it means we won’t be moving forward with your application this time. We truly appreciate your interest in our company and the time you took to apply. Thank you!

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