Systems Engineer II

NRTC is Member Driven and Technology Focused – providing solutions that help our 1,500 electric and telephone members bring all the advantages of today’s evolving technology to rural America. NRTC’s solutions are developed specifically to meet the needs of rural utilities and their customers, and include integrated broadband, managed services, smart grid, mobile and video solutions. We are a dynamic, growing cooperative with more than 800 employees operating out of eight office locations.

Job Summary

Systems Engineer II will support our internal and external IT operations, internal network, and DevOps processes for our development efforts. The DevSecOps team is currently modernizing the infrastructure of 5+ Acquistions of NRTC in recent years. We intend to standardize Ubuntu Linux as base, with containers for applications. In the process we will take the old systems, move them into infrastructure as code and redeploy as needed.

Responsibilities

• Use Ansible, Terraform, and similar tools to monitor, manage, and automate Linux servers and network devices
• Deploy and maintain customer-facing applications in a containerized environment, leveraging various orchestration platforms and configuration templates
• Create and maintain runbooks for routine operations, incident response, and disaster recovery; automate repeatable steps wherever possible
• Design, build, and maintain centralized logging and observability pipelines (ELK/EFK, Prometheus/Grafana, or cloud-native alternatives); author alert rules and dashboards to focus on key metrics
• Convert manual legacy configurations into IaC; containerize legacy applications and integrate them into CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
• Integrate host- and container-level vulnerability scanning into build pipelines
• Develop scripts and automation (Bash, Python) to reduce manual tasks
• Configure and maintain cloud infrastructure (AWS EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, CloudWatch) using Terraform or CloudFormation
• Mentor peers on container concepts, IaC, and DevSecOps best practices. 
• Other duties as assigned

Qualifications Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Proficient in core networking principles
• Proficient with Linux, Familiarity with Both Centos and Ubuntu
• Work independently or as part of a team to diagnose and troubleshoot issues
• Ability to learn and understand current and evolving technologies both at a high level and at a detailed level • Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation) and configuration management (Ansible, Puppet, or Chef). Container orchestration concepts—deploying and managing containers at scale with templated configurations.
• Cloud experience—managing AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, CloudWatch) or equivalent
• Centralized logging and monitoring (ELK/EFK, Prometheus, Grafana, or cloud-native)
• IT security fundamentals
• Strong troubleshooting skills across infrastructure, networking, and applications
• Scripting proficiency (Bash, Python) for automation and diagnostics
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to create runbooks, documentation, and train others
• Self-motivated, detail-oriented, and proactive; exercises good judgment in escalating issues

Minimum Education and Experience

Demonstrable experience can be subsisted for any of the before requirements. Examples being Open Source, personal or community project

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, MIS or related field preferred
• Five (5) years managing Linux server infrastructure (installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and security). Two (2) years managing containerization and orchestration concepts in production
• Two (2) years managing AWS or other cloud environments—designing VPCs, provisioning services, and implementing IaC
• Experience migrating legacy systems into IaC frameworks and automating deployments

Note: How you developed your skills matters less than being able to demonstrate them. You will be evaluated on the skills listed on your CV that are relevant to our technology stack and business.

Physical Demands

• This position requires on call support rotation – 24x7 support
• Minimum domestic travel possible, approximately 5%
• Work is typically performed in a remote office setting

Disclaimer: The above job description summary is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals assigned to this position. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. 

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