Senior Platform Engineer at Kerridge Commercial Systems South Africa

We are looking for a Senior Platform Engineer with a strong Linux and DevOps background to join our cloud platform engineering infrastructure team. Our team is responsible for delivering repeatable, scalable and most importantly highly available and reliable platform services. We provide these services to our professional service delivery teams (Oracle & Applications) and ultimately our customers. We need to make sure the production systems are available 24×7 and that new and existing deployments are automated and that configuration drift is eliminated. You will also work on new tooling and automation to meet future needs, which is key. We want someone who embraces collaboration and can work well with others including other parts of the business to streamline operations and innovate with new technologies.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Standardize, automate the provisioning, and support aspects as reusable services and interfaces
• Develop infrastructure as code using best practices and implementations for non-production and production environments
• Implement automated configuration and deployment process towards improving functionality, availability, and manageability of our offerings
• Improve productivity in delivery orchestration, proactive monitoring, self-healing automation and operations validations
• Solve problems related to these mission critical services and build automation to proactively detect and prevent their re-occurrences
• Support technology automation Compute, Storage, Backups and Operating system in the on-premises environments and private/public cloud
• Automate repeated tasks and spend more time on engineering and innovation 

Minimum Certification and Exams:

Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) – (Up to date)

• A Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) is a Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) who is ready to automate Red Hat Enterprise Linux tasks, integrate Red Hat emerging technologies, and apply automation for efficiency and innovation. 

Red Hat Certified Specialist in Managing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform exam (EX467)

• The Red Hat Certified Specialist in Managing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform exam tests your ability to use advanced features of Ansible Automation Platform to manage environments at scale. Red Hat Certified Specialists in Managing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of managing  large and complex projects and using Ansible automation controller and Ansible automation hub. 

Highly Beneficial: 

• Red Hat Certified Architect 
• Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform (EX374)

A Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform is capable of performing these tasks: 

• Using Git to manage collections of playbooks
• Manage task execution
• Create, download, install and use content collections
• Create, download, install and use execution environments
• Manage inventories, credentials, advanced inventories
• Manage automation controller 

Red Hat Certified Specialist in Configuration Management (EX405)

An IT professional who is a Red Hat Certified Specialist in Configuration Management is capable of performing these tasks:

• Install and configure Puppet.
• Create and maintain Puppet manifests.
• Create Puppet modules.
• Use facter to obtain system information.
• Work with Git repositories.
• Implement Puppet in a Red Hat Satellite 6 environment. 

Skills Requirements: 

• Ansible: An IT professional who can demonstrate mastery of Ansible, knowledge of Ansible Controller, and a complete understanding of Ansible best practices, including inventory management, modules, tasks, plays, and roles. 
• Ansible Modules: Familiarity with Ansible modules for managing various components of infrastructure such as files, packages, services, users, etc. You should know how to utilize modules to perform specific tasks on target systems.
• Inventory Management: Understanding how to manage Ansible inventories, including static and dynamic inventory, grouping hosts, and managing variables associated with hosts and groups.
• Ansible Tower/Oracle Linux Automation Manager: Proficiency in installing, configuring, and managing Ansible Tower or Oracle Linux Automation Manager, which includes setting up users, teams, credentials, and job templates. Understanding Tower's web interface and REST API is also beneficial.
• Scripting and Automation: Scripting skills (e.g., Bash, Python) are essential for extending Ansible's capabilities, creating custom modules, and integrating Ansible with other tools and services.
• YAML: The suitable candidate needs to be comfortable writing YAML code to define tasks, variables, and play structures.
• Playbook Development: Ability to create and manage playbooks for configuration management, application deployment, and orchestration tasks. This involves structuring playbooks, defining tasks, handlers, and using variables effectively.
• Version Control Systems: Knowledge of version control systems like Git is essential for managing playbooks, roles, and other configuration files. Understanding how to collaborate effectively using version control is crucial in a team environment.
• Linux/Unix Systems Administration: Solid understanding of Linux/Unix systems administration, including command-line operations, file systems, permissions, networking, and security. Ability to do troubleshooting and understanding target systems.
• Security Best Practices: Awareness of security best practices related to automation and configuration management, including secure credential storage, least privilege access, and encryption. 
• Troubleshooting and Debugging: Ability to troubleshoot playbook failures, identify errors, and debug issues using Ansible's verbose output, logging, and error messages.
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Understanding how Ansible fits into CI/CD pipelines and integrating Ansible Tower with CI/CD tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI.