# Linux System Administrator

**Company:** [Black Canyon Consulting](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/blackcanyonconsulting)
**Location:** Bethesda, MD
**Role:** IT Support
**Skills:** Python, Bash, Http/Https, Tls, Cloud Security, Rate Limiting, Log Analysis, Traffic Analysis, Access Control, Bot Detection
**Posted:** 2026-05-26

> Support NCBI's high-traffic biomedical platforms by monitoring, analyzing, and mitigating web abuse, DDoS, and scraping across hybrid cloud and on-prem infrastructure. Requires strong web architecture knowledge and hands-on experience with cloud security controls.

## Job Description

## Duties & Responsibilities
- Develop and own protection metrics and alerting — build dashboards and alert pipelines that surface anomalies across a range of network and application-layer signals.
- Perform deep log analysis to identify overuse, scraping, abuse, DDoS, and attack patterns across millions of daily requests.
- Operate and tune cloud-based edge security controls — configure and update security policies, rate limiting, and adaptive protection rules in response to evolving threats.
- Enforce traffic controls — apply a range of mitigation strategies to abusive traffic while minimizing impact to legitimate users.
- Monitor continuously and respond quickly — triage incidents and either resolve them directly or escalate to development or sysadmin teams with clear, actionable information.
- Support protection across a mixed cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

## Requirements
- Strong understanding of high-volume web service architecture — how traffic flows, where bottlenecks and abuse vectors appear, and how load balancers and edge infrastructure make routing decisions.
- Hands-on experience with a major cloud provider's security and networking stack.
- Solid grasp of HTTP/HTTPS protocol internals — headers, TLS behavior, connection patterns, and how these relate to traffic analysis and fingerprinting techniques.
- Experience analyzing traffic using network and application-layer signals including address-based, organizational, and transport-layer fingerprinting methods.
- Familiarity with common web server platforms, their log formats, and configuration.
- Ability to read, write, and tune access control and rate-limiting rules under pressure.
- Comfort working across hybrid infrastructure environments.

## Preferred Skills
- Experience with advanced abuse mitigation techniques, including traffic redirection and challenge-response mechanisms.
- Scripting or automation experience (Python, Bash, or similar) for log parsing and rule generation.
- Prior work protecting high-traffic government or research platforms.
- Knowledge of bot detection techniques beyond simple blocking — behavioral signals, fingerprinting, headless browser detection, and similar approaches.
- Familiarity with evolving attacker tradecraft and how modern scrapers and abusers adapt to countermeasures.

## Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage
- 401k plan with employer contribution
- Paid holidays and vacation
- Tuition reimbursement

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