Job Description & Details
This is a heavy-duty, hands-on infrastructure gig where you won't just be pushing configs, you'll literally be racking and stacking servers in the data center. It's a short 3-month contract based entirely onsite in San Jose, perfect for a sysadmin who loves a mix of traditional hardware management and modern DevOps tooling.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
You'll be juggling everything from physical data center operations—like moving hardware and managing Cisco and Mellanox network gear—to maintaining virtualized environments on VMware and KVM. Your day-to-day will involve wrangling storage arrays from NetApp and PureStorage, keeping Linux and Windows environments patched and secure, and supporting R&D teams by configuring EDA tools and license managers like FlexLM. Expect to handle daily monitoring, backups, user access requests, and occasional after-hours maintenance windows.
The Core Tech Stack
You need deep expertise in Linux administration (Red Hat/CentOS/Ubuntu) with bulletproof shell scripting skills. VMware administration and management are non-negotiable here, along with foundational DevOps tools like Ansible for infra automation, Jenkins, and Git. Familiarity with enterprise storage, Foreman for deployment, and security frameworks like CompTIA Security+ or RHCSA will make or break your ability to hit the ground running.
Interview Expectations
Expect the hiring team to grill you on your incident response workflow, particularly how you diagnose and isolate a silent bottleneck in a virtualized, multi-tier architecture involving storage latency and networking partitions. They want to see how methodically you comb through system logs and iptables. They will also likely test your physical data center competence and ask you to walk through a complex server migration or rack-and-stack procedure from planning to cable management.
Application Advice
Make sure your resume heavily features your hands-on Linux sysadmin background, specific virtualization metrics, and any direct experience with enterprise hardware like NetApp or Cisco. Explicitly include keywords like Ansible, VMware, Jenkins, Git, and RHCSA so you easily clear the ATS filters. Since this role requires physical lifting up to 50 lbs and 5 days onsite, highlight any past data center migration work front and center.