Systems Administrator (Linux)
First-line Linux systems administrator keeping Bluestaq's UK estate supporting NATO delivery running day to day on AWS and on-prem: owning tickets and incidents, patching, backups, monitoring and small low-risk changes under change control, on a four-on/four-off 10-hour shift rota. Core stack: Linux, AWS, Bash/Python scripting, ITSM.
- Compensation
- £35K–£40K / yr
- Location
- Lincoln / Lincolnshire, UK
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Devops
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Hands-on Linux administration in a live production environment
- Experience with cloud or virtualisation platforms (AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware vSphere or similar is transferable)
- Working understanding of how OS, networking, identity, storage and applications interact, including access control and permissions
- Ability to troubleshoot common faults using logs, status tools and documentation
- Scripting in Bash, Python or similar, with an instinct to automate
- Curiosity and method: root-cause analysis and documenting what was done and why
- Confidence handling user and system issues independently within a ticketing/ITSM workflow; understanding of why change control matters
- Ownership and customer-service mindset; clear communication with technical and non-technical colleagues
- Judgement with AI tools, including responsible handling of sensitive data
- Right to work in the UK
- Ability to meet security requirements
- Willingness to work 10-hour shifts on a four-on, four-off rota including weekends and bank holidays; night shifts may follow as the service moves to 24/7
- Willingness and eligibility to travel to Bluestaq HQ in the US for onboarding and occasionally to sites across the UK and Europe
Nice to have
- Familiarity with NATO structures, NCIA, the MOD or other allied defence programmes
- Linux certification such as RHCSA, LPIC-1, CompTIA Linux+, Network+ or Security+
- Exposure to configuration management or infrastructure-as-code tooling such as Ansible or Terraform
- Exposure to containerised platforms such as Docker or Kubernetes
- Experience with Confluence and Jira or similar platforms
Full description
**About Bluestaq Limited
**Bluestaq starts with our people. We are looking for teammates who THINK strategically, SERVE the mission and LEAD from wherever they stand. If you bring curiosity, ownership and a thirst for delivery, we would like to hear from you.
Every society runs on invisible systems; Bluestaq is that, for data. Bluestaq Ltd is the UK sovereign subsidiary of Bluestaq LLC (Colorado Springs, USA), and we build the secure data infrastructure that allied operations depend on: mission-critical solutions, flowing through thousands of global users, from ingest to publication in milliseconds, for customers spanning the NATO, Five Eyes and wider allied partners.
We are in our formative years in the UK, building on proven foundations in the USA and Australia. That means real opportunity, early: decisions at your level, and colleagues who know their craft and trust you to know yours.
The Role
You will be the first line of response for Bluestaq’s UK systems, keeping the Linux estate that supports our NATO delivery running day to day on AWS. You will own routine incidents and small changes through to resolution. When a problem needs deeper expertise, you will escalate to our Senior Systems Administrators and learn from how they resolve it.
This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports, reporting to the Systems Administration Manager, with a clear technical path that does not require you to become a manager.
What You Will Do
- Support enterprise systems across test and production environments, in cloud and on-premises estates.
- Drive tickets and incidents from triage to resolution, prioritising your own queue on severity and impact.
- Install, configure and secure common services, making small, low-risk changes safely and verifying their impact.
- Carry out patching, upgrades, backups and monitoring checks under change control, and act on scan findings and logs.
- Propose small operational improvements: better alerts, clearer documentation, simple automation.
- Support internal teams, data providers, data owners and data consumers.
- Take part in UK operational coverage, including on-call rotation and structured handovers with the US team.
What You Bring
- Hands-on Linux administration in a live production environment. Experience on Microsoft Azure, VMware vSphere or similar platforms is transferable.
- A working understanding of how operating systems, networking, identity, storage and applications interact, including access control and permissions, and the ability to troubleshoot common faults using logs, status tools and documentation.