Senior Linux Systems & Virtualization Engineer (Virtual Appliance Deployment)

About the Role

We are building a cutting-edge voice processing appliance designed for both physical hardware and virtualized enterprise environments. While our specialized engineering team is focused on developing the core voice-processing services, we are seeking a Senior Linux Systems Engineer to own the lifecycle, architecture, security posture, and packaging of the Shama AI Platform as a turnkey, enterprise-grade appliance. You will be responsible for taking our application containers and AI models and embedding them into a secure, hardened, highly optimized Linux image that enterprise IT administrators can easily deploy, configure, and maintain across hypervisor platforms such as VMware vSphere, KVM, and Nutanix, or on our specific GPU-enabled hardware.

Key Responsibilities

· OS Setup & Hardening: Lead the configuration, optimization, and strict hardening of our Linux-based operating system. Ensure no direct OS interaction for end-users and lock down root access.

· Security Implementation: Design and enforce rigorous security policies. Configure firewalls, implement fail2ban, limit network exposure to only necessary services, and ensure all services operate on a "least privilege" principle.

· Restricted Administration Interface: Build and maintain a restricted Shell/CLI administration interface (BusyBox) for safe, controlled appliance management.

· Core Platform Services: Architect and build the foundational services of the appliance, including:

· Centralized Logging & Telemetry systems.

· Automated Schedulers for background tasks.

· System Monitoring, Alerts, and Notification pipelines, Health-check diagnostics (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Vector, systemd-journald)

· High Availability (HA) & Watchdog mechanisms.

· A robust, fail-safe Update/Upgrade pipeline (OTA).

· Virtualization & Packaging: Build, test, and maintain deployment-ready images for bare-metal physical hardware as well as major hypervisors (specifically VMware and Hyper-V).

· Network & Storage Configuration: Develop and optimize network setups (multi-NIC configurations, low-latency kernel tuning, iptables/nftables) and storage layout policies (LVM, encryption at rest via LUKS, thin/thick provisioning).

· Frontend Integration: Collaborate closely with frontend developers to create secure, seamless GUI/API/system connections between the UI and underlying background platform services.

· Future Roadmap: Help architect and drive our future transition from a standard Ubuntu base to a custom, purpose-built Linux distribution using Yocto.

Required Qualifications

Technical Expertise

• 5+ Years of Experience in Linux systems engineering, with a specific focus on building, distributing, or managing appliances for enterprise deployments.

· Strong, proven experience in Linux Systems Administration/Engineering (Ubuntu/Debian ecosystem), comprehensive knowledge of the Linux boot process, custom systemd service generation, network stack tuning, kernel-level virtualization, and shell scripting (Advanced Bash / Python) for automation, scheduling, and system monitoring.

· Deep understanding of Linux OS hardening, security auditing, and system lockdown (AppArmor, SELinux, iptables/nftables, user privilege management, vulnerability patching).

· Experience building or configuring restricted shells/CLIs and building system-level services (systemd, watchdog timers, telemetry).

· Solid understanding of container runtimes (Docker, containers) and how to package container images, database schemas (Redis, MySQL), and models into a self-contained local storage format.

· Hands-on experience with virtualization platforms (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V) and image creation/provisioning tools (e.g., Packer, cloud-init).

· Knowledge of how to bridge web frontends with backend OS services (e.g., via REST APIs, WebSockets, or local sockets).

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven experience optimizing Linux OS and drivers (e.g., CUDA, ROCm) for maximum GPU compute performance. Includes hands-on experience managing bare-metal GPU tuning and vGPU/PCIe passthrough in hypervisors (VMware, Hyper-V) to support high-throughput, low-latency voice processing workloads.
• 
  
• Experience deploying software into highly restricted, regulated environments (e.g., banking, telecom, government).

· Previous experience building Linux appliances or embedded systems.

· Familiarity with modern telemetry and logging stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or similar).