Sr. RHEL Systems Engineer, OT/SCADA
ON.energy · Houston, TX
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Jul 1, 2026
Houston, TX
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A platform-engineering role focused on building and maintaining hardened RHEL images and containerized SCADA workloads for on-premises energy-management systems at data-center sites. The work centers on OS image construction, Podman-based container delivery, host networking and firewall configuration, CIS/STIG hardening, and patch lifecycle management for disconnected environments. Suits a seasoned Linux engineer comfortable serving as a deep technical authority and L3 escalation point, with no field installation duties involved.
Senior level · 7+ years · Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 15 people in the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (network and computer systems administrators). range 3–20
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $103,660 (middle half $83,599–$133,973).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The SOC classification is a genuine judgment call. The role builds and hardens OS images, manages container runtimes, and writes Ansible automation (signals toward 15-1252 Software Developers), but its primary day-to-day work is operating and hardening a platform that runs someone else's application (Ignition SCADA), with no application-level software development — which points to 15-1244. 15-1244 was chosen as the primary because the role's core output is a hardened, maintained OS/container platform rather than shipped application code.
Location is stated as 'Houston, TX area preferred' — not a hard requirement. The role is not listed as remote; 20% travel to data-center sites is expected.
The JD covers both US-based and Mexico-based compensation structures. The role is classified as US-based given the Houston preference and US data-center site context; no compensation figures were provided.
Version control is listed as a hard requirement ('Automation (Ansible) and version control') but no specific VCS tool is named; Git is the canonical default and is listed as must-have accordingly.
Wireshark and tcpdump are listed together as peer diagnostic tools in the same requirement; Wireshark is used as the primary name with tcpdump as an alternative. The 'ss' and 'ip' commands are standard Linux utilities rather than named tools and are omitted.
The Windows image pipeline (Packer) is explicitly described as a 'maintain in steady state' responsibility, not a build-from-scratch one, and Packer/Windows skills appear only under Nice-to-Have.
Read the full posting
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