[Hiring] Senior IT Architect @University of Texas at Austin

Role Description

This fixed-term position is funded for two years from the employee’s start date and may be extended. Flexible work arrangements are available for this position, including the ability to work remotely within the United States. Remote work for individuals who reside outside Texas but within the United States and its territories will be considered and requires Central Office approval. May require occasional travel to Austin Main Campus.

This position provides life/work balance with typically a 40-hour work week and travel limited to training (e.g., conferences/courses).

Your skills will make a difference. You’ll be working for a university that is internationally recognized for research and the work you do will make a difference in the lives of our students, faculty, and staff. If you’re the type of person that wants to know your work has meaning and impact, you’ll like working for our campus.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Linux Platform Architecture
  • Lead the design, build, and continuous improvement of a central Linux management platform supporting diverse research, academic, and administrative environments.
  • Develop platform architecture for configuration management, software deployment, patching, compliance, and reporting.
  • Evaluate and implement enterprise Linux management platforms such as Tanium, RHEL, or comparable platforms.
  • Create platform standards that are scalable, secure, and effective across heterogeneous Linux distributions.
• Distributed IT Onboarding and Adoption
  • Work directly with distributed IT teams to assess existing Linux environments, operational maturity, management gaps, and onboarding readiness.
  • Develop onboarding plans to help departments transition Linux systems into a central platform.
  • Create guides, onboarding checklists, and documentation for campus IT teams.
  • Consult with system administrators, endpoint teams, cloud teams, and application owners on platform adoption and service integration.
  • Identify opportunities to consolidate redundant tooling, reduce operational fragmentation, and improve consistency across departmental Linux management practices.
• Automation, Configuration, and Compliance
  • Design and maintain automation frameworks for provisioning, configuration enforcement, policy compliance, patching, reporting, and system lifecycle activities.
  • Develop reusable scripts, modules, playbooks, policies, or configuration baselines using Bash, Python, or comparable technologies.
  • Implement practices that support drift detection, remediation workflows, auditable change, and repeatable operations.
  • Partner with information security teams to align Linux management with institutional security requirements, vulnerability management, and compliance objectives.
• Linux Platform Operations and Engineering
  • Provide advanced Linux engineering guidance across RHEL, Ubuntu, or comparable enterprise distributions.
  • Support platform operations across physical, virtual, containerized, and cloud-hosted Linux systems.
  • Develop operational standards for patching, software distribution, access control, monitoring, logging, and service health.
  • Troubleshoot complex technical issues involving Linux systems, automation frameworks, management agents, network dependencies, storage, identity, or cloud integrations.
• Reporting, Metrics, and Service Visibility
  • Design reporting that provides visibility into Linux inventory, platform adoption, compliance posture, vulnerability exposure, and platform health.
  • Develop executive and operational dashboards that communicate service value, onboarding progress, risk reduction, and platform maturity.
  • Define measures and key performance indicators for platform adoption, service quality, compliance, and operational effectiveness.
  • Use metrics to identify improvement opportunities, prioritize remediation efforts, and guide long-term Linux service strategy.
• Cloud and Hybrid Infrastructure Alignment
  • Support a Linux platform across on-premises and hybrid infrastructure environments.
  • Develop management patterns for cloud-hosted Linux servers, container platforms, and infrastructure-as-code workflows.
  • Provide guidance on operational consistency, logging, patching, and compliance, across cloud and campus-hosted systems.
  • Partner with infrastructure teams to align Linux platform services with enterprise cloud architecture standards.
• Strategic Service Leadership
  • Participate in technology roadmaps, service design, and long-term infrastructure planning.
  • Mentor technical staff and provide leadership on Linux management, automation, reporting, and operational best practices.
  • Communicate technical recommendations clearly to technical staff, managers, service owners, and institutional stakeholders.
  • Help build an adoption-focused service model that encourages participation from distributed IT organizations and demonstrates measurable institutional value.
  • Perform other related functions as assigned.

Qualifications

• Advanced expertise with Linux operating systems including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky Linux, or comparable distributions.
• Experience with enterprise Linux management, configuration management, endpoint management, automation, or systems management platforms such as Tanium, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, Red Hat Satellite, or comparable tools.
• Advanced scripting and automation experience using Bash, Python, PowerShell, infrastructure-as-code tools, or comparable technologies.
• Experience with software deployment, patch management, configuration baselines, and compliance reporting for Linux systems.
• Experience designing or integrating monitoring, logging, observability, dashboarding, and operational reporting solutions.
• Experience with AWS and Azure infrastructure services, hybrid cloud operations, or cloud-hosted Linux management patterns.
• Strong understanding of enterprise networking, identity, authentication, security, storage, virtualization, and containerization concepts.
• Experience with source control, DevOps practices, documentation, and repeatable operational workflows.

Requirements

• Ability to consult with distributed IT teams and guide technical onboarding.
• Ability to translate platform capabilities into practical adoption plans, standards, and operational procedures.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to system administrators, managers, service owners, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to balance standardization with legitimate local requirements in a federated or decentralized IT environment.
• U.S. Citizen, resident, or officially recognized asylee - Applicant selected will be subject to government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information at the level appropriate to the project requirements of the position.
• Equivalent combination of relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in higher education, research computing, public-sector IT, or similarly distributed technology environments.
• Experience onboarding decentralized organizations into centralized or shared IT service platforms.
• Experience implementing service consolidation, technology standardization, or platform adoption initiatives across multiple units.
• Experience operating Linux management platforms at enterprise scale.
• Experience with observability tools such as Splunk, Graylog, Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Netdata, or comparable platforms.
• Experience with virtualization, Kubernetes, container platforms, infrastructure-as-code, or cloud-native operations.

Benefits

• Competitive health benefits (Employee premiums covered at 100%, family premiums at 50%)
• Vision, Dental, Life, and Disability insurance options
• Paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays
• Teachers Retirement System of Texas (a defined benefit retirement plan)
• Additional Voluntary Retirement Programs: Tax Sheltered Annuity 403(b) and a Deferred Compensation program 457(b)
• Flexible spending account options for medical and childcare expenses
• Training and conference opportunities
• Tuition assistance
• Athletic ticket discounts
• Access to UT Austin's libraries and museums
• Free rides on all UT Shuttle and Capital metro buses with staff ID card