Unix/Linux Administrator (Full Remote Within Commuting Distance)

The California Independent System Operator (ISO) manages the flow of electricity across the high-voltage, long-distance power lines that make up 80 percent of California's power grid. We safeguard the economy and well-being of 30 million Californians by operating the grid reliably 24/7.

As the impartial grid operator, the California ISO opens access to the wholesale power market that is designed to diversify resources and lower prices. It also grants equal access to 25,865 circuit-miles of power lines and reduces barriers to diverse resources competing to bring power to customers.

The California ISO's function is often compared to that of air traffic controllers. It would be grossly unfair for air traffic controllers to represent one airline and profit from allowing that company's planes to go through before others. In the same way, the California ISO operates independently—managing the electron traffic on a power grid we do not own—making sure electricity is safely delivered to utilities and consumers on time and reliably.

The California ISO is committed to the health, safety, and work/life integration of its employees, and is proud to offer flexible work arrangements. This position would be eligible to participate in a remote work capacity, but requires the ability to commute in as needed.

Relocation assistance is available.

Under the general direction of the Manager, develops, integrates, customizes, tests and administers servers, databases and other supported systems across highly complex environments and redundant sites. Monitors, maintains and upgrades servers and other supported systems to ensure the highest level of availability. Provides system testing and may oversee test lab configuration and participate in vendor management tasks. Develops and manages automation of build and deployment tools.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Develops, customizes, integrates, installs, configures and administers UNIX servers, databases and infrastructure supporting systems to ensure highest level of availability, performance and security for specific project initiatives. In response to incidents, exercising their independent judgement to create an effective solution, workaround, and strategies to quickly resolve the issue to minimize the impact to the reliability to the power grid and market. With minimum supervision, participates and lead technical teams, acting on own authority, establishing the working groups, to establish the short and long term solutions and plans, to prevent impacts to services, needed to run power grid reliability.
• Develops and manages automation and deployment of source code from the development team. Create documentation and procedures, coaches and mentors team members to develop/enhance their skills and growing their abilities. Maintains a release repository which includes build and release procedures, dependencies, and notification lists. Measures and monitors progress to ensure releases are delivered on time and meet the acceptance criteria.
• Collaborates with team members to analyze and resolve complex technical issues related to integrated hardware, servers, software and other supported systems. Works with representatives from various ISO business units, project teams and Architectures to design technology solutions and strategies that meet business requirements.
• Collects and distributes data for supported systems capacity planning and performance management. Proactively identify issues, create workable solutions and provide recommendation to management, Uses data replication and other appropriate systems to ensure data integrity and to provide for superior uptime and accurate data collection. Provides daily maintenance and technical support to project teams on the development of application systems and coordinates and deploys approved production-ready applications into multiple environments. Participates and provides UNIX administrative support, develop strategies and architecture artifacts to project teams for server/software installation and configuration, for both purchased and internally developed, during various phases of implementation or testing, to meet the requirements of new functionality which is vital to the success and growth of the organization Coordinates associated vendor activities and ensures compliance with contracts and with ISO standards.

Level of Education and Discipline

• A Bachelor's degree (BA, BS) or equivalent education, training or experience in Computer Science, Information Technology, Management of Information Systems, Engineering or related technical field.
• Advanced degree preferred.

Amount of Experience

• Equivalent years of education and training, plus five (5) or more years related experience.

Type of Experience

• Client server computer systems operations, functionality, backup & recovery to include coordination of disaster recovery preparedness planning required.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot errors and determine their sources (OS, hardware, software, etc). Experience with UNIX/LINUX Operating System Server, Virtualized systems, LDAP, Networking, SPLUNK, Apache,F5 Enterprise Backup and hardware – RHEL .
• IT LINUX/UNIX development, security and administration required.
• Experience working in a Corporate information technology, LINUX/UNIX engineering and administration environment.
• Experience in Puppet, Ansible, Jenkins, Atlassian Bamboo, Apache Maven or other DevOps related tools.
• Experience in common build tools and integration tools. Experience in LAN protocols, Storage implementation and Security.

Additional skills and abilities

• Must be self-starting and willing and able to work independently in a dynamic corporate organization under pressure of tight deadlines and aggressive expectations.
• In-depth knowledge of relevant commonly-used concepts, best practices and procedures strongly desired.
• Must be able to work effectively in a team environment as facilitator and team member.
• Ability to use deductive reasoning and analytical thinking with sound judgment and decision-making skills.
• Self-motivated, problem solving skills and the ability to influence others without direct authority.
• Excellent interpersonal and conflict resolution skills are also essential.
• Extensive systems knowledge working in a highly advanced and highly complex environment so as to be able to make recommendations on the evolution of technology within a 1 to 3 year time horizon.
• Excellent analytical, verbal and written communication and documentation skills required, with a demonstrated attention to detail.

The pay range for the UNIX/LINUX Administrator at the CAISO is $54.09 - $90.14 per hour.