Linux Engineer

Maryam Safdar

Linux Engineer

New York, NY 646-***-**** ***************@*****.*** linkedin.com/in/maryam-s9

SUMMARY:

A Red Hat Certified System Admin (RHCSA) who is resourceful and technically proficient Linux Engineer with over 6 years of experience delivering Linux Administration, Linux System Administration, and Linux Engineering across enterprise environments through efficient Linux configuration, Ansible automation, and infrastructure optimization. Adept at managing BareMetal and virtual machines, deploying secure and scalable Linux based solutions, and automating routine operations using Bash, Ansible, Git, Docker, and other DevOps tools. Demonstrated ability to monitor system health, troubleshoot complex issues, and ensure service reliability in high availability environments. Strong understanding of cloud services (AWS), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and modern CI/CD workflows. Recognized for a proactive mindset, attention to detail, and a strong commitment to infrastructure integrity and uptime.

CERTIFICATIONS:

The Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking (Google)

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)

https://www.credly.com/badges/59448cfc-4397-4458-9ce7-d11d788064d6

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Operating Systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 7/8/9), CentOS, Oracle Linux (OEL), Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Ubuntu Server (20.04/22.04/24.04 LTS), Debian, Fedora, Amazon Linux 2/2023, Unix

Provisioning: OS/System Provisioning, PXE Boot, Kickstart Automation, Cloud-init, Image Management, Rolling Upgrades

Linux Kernel & Boot: Linux Kernel, Kernel Tuning, Kernel Parameters, sysctl, ulimits, systemd, systemctl, journalctl, Boot Process, GRUB/GRUB2, initramfs, Runlevels

Package & Patch Management: YUM, DNF, RPM, APT, dpkg, YUM Repository, Local Repositories, Repository Mirroring, Patching, Patch Management

Cloud: AWS (EC2, EBS, EFS, S3, Glacier, IAM, AMI, ELB, Auto Scaling, SG, VPC, Route 53, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, & CloudTrail), Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Hybrid Cloud

DevOps: Docker, Containers/Container Basics, Kubernetes (K8s), CI/CD, Configuration Management, Infrastructure Automation, Ansible Tower/AWX, Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)

Scripting & Automation: Bash/Shell Scripting, Python, Ansible (Playbooks, Roles, ad-Hoc commands), awk, sed, grep, Regex, YAML, JSON, XML, REST APIs, Cron/Cron Jobs, at, Task Scheduling

Remote Access & Security: SSH/SSH Keys/SSH Hardening, SCP, rsync, SFTP, Sudo/sudoers, SELinux, AppArmor, PAM, LDAP, Active Directory, SSSD, Kerberos, Authentication, Authorization, RBAC, iptables, firewalld, nftables, Firewalls, fail2ban, System Hardening, CIS Benchmarks, Vulnerability Management, Auditd, AIDE, chroot, Certificate Management, TLS/SSL, OpenSSL, GPG, LUKS, dm-crypt, Encryption, Compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS)

Storage & Filesystems: LVM (Physical Volume, Volume Group, Logical Volume, LVM Snapshots), Disk Management/Partitioning (fdisk, parted, gdisk), File Systems (EXT3/EXT4, XFS, Btrfs), File System Mounting, /etc/fstab, autofs, Filesystem ACLs, Quota Management

File Sharing Services: NFS, CIFS/SMB, Samba, FTP/vsftpd, NAS, SAN, DAS, iSCSI, Multipath, Storage Provisioning

Networking: TCP/IP, UDP, DNS (BIND), DHCP, SNMP, HTTP/HTTPS, NetworkManager, nmcli, ip command, iproute2, Routing/Static Routing, VLAN, NIC Bonding/Link Aggregation, Network Bridging, LAN/WAN Troubleshooting, IP Configuration, Wireshark, tcpdump, netstat, nmap, ss, traceroute, ping, mtr, dig, nslookup, Apache/httpd, NGINX, Tomcat, HAProxy, Load Balancing

Monitoring & Backups: Nagios, Zabbix, Splunk, Performance Monitoring, Log Management, System Logs, syslog, rsyslog, /var/log, logrotate, top, htop, vmstat, iostat, sar, dstat, strace, ltrace, ps, lsof, tar/gzip, Backup and Recovery, Disaster Recovery (DR), Cron, Manual & Automated Backups

Virtualization & Hardware: VMware vSphere/ESXi/vCenter, Hypervisor, Virtualization, Server Migrations (P2V/V2V), HP iLO, Dell iDRAC, IPMI, Out-of-band Management, Rack & Stack, High Availability (HA), Failover, Clustering

Version Control: Git (Basic Operations), GitHub, Bitbucket, Version Control

Ticketing & Communication: ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, ITIL, Change Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Incident Response, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Runbooks, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), Troubleshooting, Performance Tuning, 24x7 Support, On-call Rotation, Tier 2/Tier 3 Support, End-user Support, Decommissioning, Capacity Planning, Agile, Scrum, Email/Phone Technical Support, Documentation

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Linux Engineer Mar 2023 - Present

AT&T, New York, NY

Automated firewall rules, LVM based storage configuration, NFS mounts and user management by creating Ansible Playbooks, utilized Ansible Modules, Ansible Roles, Variables, Templates and Handlers on Linux servers.

Wrote Ansible playbooks to automate Linux Patching, Package Management (YUM/DNF/RPM/APT/dpkg) and SystemD (systemctl/journalctl) Management on RHEL 7/8/9 & Debian/Ubuntu servers to reduce errors, high accuracy and faster workflow.

Built and managed KVM Virtualization hosts using libvirt, virsh & virt-manager to provision Linux VMs alongside the VMware production hypervisors, performed QEMU image conversions for portability across hypervisors.

Managed Inventory, Jobs, Templates, Projects, Credentials, and executed playbooks on Ansible Automation Platform (Ansible Tower/AWX), orchestrating configuration changes across hundreds of nodes with Git integration.

Created reusable CloudFormation (Infrastructure as Code) templates to deploy secure, customized AWS infrastructure including VPCs, subnets, EC2, and IAM roles.

Provisioned secure and scalable cloud infrastructure on multiple EC2 Instances using ELB as well as utilized IAM for restrict access to application data in S3 in AWS.

Managed VMware virtual infrastructure tasks using VMware vSphere/vCenter, including server Provisioning, cloning, snapshots, storage management, LVM, CPU/memory allocation, migrated VMs using vMotion.

Created and enforced AWS IAM Policies and Roles for controlled user access and integrated IAM role-based (RBAC) automation by writing Ansible Playbooks.

Configured and supported production/non-production Linux servers Red Hat, CentOS across hybrid environments, uptime surety, LVM, service management, and compliance with Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Supported daily operations via ServiceNow by resolving incident tickets, change approvals (CAB) escalating unresolved issues, and tracking service impacts, also created Bash/Shell scripts to resolve tickets efficiently.

Handled RHEL 7/8 to 9 Linux Kernel upgrades using Leapp Utility and Bash Scripts for post upgrades package installations, rollback planning to minimize risk for Linux machines and resolved application compatibility issues.

Replaced manual Deployments with multiple microservices by writing customized Docker files and Compose configurations to make sure identical application setups across multiple environments.

Utilized Git and Bitbucket to maintain version control after writing Ansible Playbooks, Bash/Shell Scripts and modifying infrastructure codes on Python, and configuration files and SystemD.

Deployed, configured and monitored critical infrastructure metrics on Nagios as well as utilized CloudWatch, and CloudTrail on AWS for alerts to take proactive action.

Migrated select RHEL 9 Linux workloads from Docker to Podman for rootless container execution and integrated image builds with Jenkins CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment to staging and production.

Configured Prometheus and Grafana dashboards to complement existing Nagios alerting, providing visibility into CPU, memory, disk metrics on XFS/ext4 filesystems, LVM volumes, and NFS mounts, application metrics across Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Solaris, and Ubuntu machines.

Enhanced platform reliability by deploying Docker containers for testing/staging environments and implementing cleanup routines on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Solaris, and Ubuntu servers.

Maintained detailed infrastructure Wiki Documentation for Linux troubleshooting processes, standard procedures, and environment-specific notes such as network troubleshooting and server performance issues.

Linux Administrator Feb 2021 - Jan 2023

Wells Fargo, New York, NY

Managed and configured custom SELinux rules and firewall (iptables/firewalld/nftables) rules to secure production servers also ensured critical application traffic passed without interruption.

Automated patching process with Ansible playbooks and Bash/Shell Scripts to eliminate manual configuration on production servers.

Deployed, secured and maintained network daemons (HTTP/HTTPS) BIND, DNS, Apache and DHCP by writing Ansible Playbooks to provide secured web hosted internal engineering tools.

Installed, configured and maintained NFS, Samba (SMB)/cifs mounts across the cluster to resolve mount errors and deliver reliable shared storage across the various teams.

Configured and maintained NIC teaming (Link Aggregation) and bonding on RHEL production and non-production environment to establish redundant and highly available network.

Deployed, configured & maintained Zabbix monitoring tool to get custom alerts on Linux machines, also managed post alert server health by using sar, top and vmstat cli tool to catch memory leaks, OOM & CPU sluggishness.

Supported storage by creating disk partitions, Logical Volume Management (LVM: Physical Volume, Volume Group, Logical Volume, LVM Snapshots) creation/expansion on Ext4 and XFS file systems, NFS mounting and troubleshooting on RedHat Linux Systems with zero downtime.

Reduced manual tasks by writing various Bash shell scripts complete routine repetitive tasks such as log archive (logrotate/rsyslog), performance checks, resource monitoring to improve Service Level Agreement (SLA) rate.

Provided controlled user access and hardened local security by configuring restricted ACLs for critical directories with LDAP/Active Directory integration via SSSD/Kerberos/PAM on Red Hat Linux environment.

Managed Tar and gzip backup scripts on bare metal servers for the backups and restore drills (Disaster Recovery/DR), coordinated retention lifecycles with the storage team.

Resolved network latency, packets drops, routing and pinging issues by using traceroute, mtr, netstat, ss, ethtool, nslookup, dig, tcpdump, Wireshark to minimize downtime and keep production running smoothly.

Deployed Splunk Universal Forwarders to Linux infrastructure by collaborating with cross functional teams for guaranteed reliable log shipping.

Supported ongoing performance tuning by analyzing System logs, CPU/memory usage, and disk I/O (using iostat/top/htop/sar/vmstat/strace/lsof), proactively addressing bottlenecks.

Collaborated with Developers & QA engineers to troubleshoot build failures, log errors, & cloud-based deployment issues.

Created structured documentation for standard processes, configurations, and recovery steps to support team handovers & audits.

Configured Software RAID using mdadm (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10) on bare-metal servers and managed Hardware RAID through vendor controllers to provide redundancy & protect production storage volumes.

Performed routine User Management & Group Management using useradd, usermod, and userdel; maintained /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group, and audited sudoers entries to enforce least-privilege access boundaries.

Remotely diagnosed hardware issues on Physical servers using ILO/IDRAC/IPMI tools, coordinating part replacements with vendors.

Built High Availability clusters using Pacemaker and Corosync for active/passive Failover of critical services, and configured Keepalived for VIP-based Load Balancing redundancy.

Supported MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL on Linux including Database Installation, configuration tuning, and scheduled Database Backups via mysqldump and pg_dump with offsite retention.

IT Support Technician Jan 2020 - Dec 2020

SUNY Old Westbury, NY

Managed Windows Server environments including troubleshooting patch failures via Ansible, disk/storage degradation across SAN, DAS and NFS, and performance bottlenecks.

Administered Active Directory for user/group provisioning via LDAP, password policy enforcement, and replication issue resolution.

Utilized PowerShell to automate scheduled tasks, bulk user creation, and service lifecycle management across Windows Server.

Reported technical issues and followed up with vendors when needed and supported users with Windows workstation setup and basic troubleshooting.

EDUCATION:

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (part-time student)

SUNY Old Westbury, NY

Expected Graduation: 2027

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