# IT Operations Technical Lead

**Company:** [Axle](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/axle)
**Location:** Frederick, MD
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Salary:** $150k – $170k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Linux, Itil, Ansible, Terraform, AWS, Python, Bash, PowerShell, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, Kubernetes, Centos, Red Hat, CI/CD
**Posted:** 2026-04-08

> Leads IT operations for hybrid cloud and on-premise infrastructure, managing Linux/Windows systems, ITIL processes, incident response, automation, and AI/ML workloads. Requires 5+ years leading teams and 10+ years hands-on Linux experience with cloud and DevOps tools.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Lead and manage IT operations aligned with ITIL processes including Incident, Problem, Change, and Release Management
- Provide hands-on leadership in managing **Linux** and **Windows** environments across cloud and on-premises infrastructure
- Own and drive incident response, root cause analysis, and service restoration for mission-critical systems
- Design, build, and maintain golden images, patching strategies, and system hardening standards
- Lead patch management and vulnerability remediation programs ensuring compliance and system integrity
- Develop and implement automation solutions using modern approaches including Vibe Coding (AI-assisted development) to accelerate operational efficiency and reduce toil
- Support and optimize infrastructure for **AI/ML** workloads, including provisioning, scaling, and performance tuning
- Manage and maintain **GPU**-enabled environments and instances for high-performance computing and machine learning use cases
- Oversee and optimize infrastructure monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability frameworks
- Manage and mentor a team of systems engineers; provide technical guidance and performance oversight
- Collaborate with architecture, security, and development teams to improve reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency
- Support hybrid environments including cloud platforms and on-premise data centers
- Ensure proper documentation, runbooks, SOPs, and operational readiness
- Stay abreast of new technologies including US Federal Standards, **NIST** Publications, cloud computing & deployment, site reliability engineering, security standards and compliance best practices

## Requirements

- **5+ years** of experience leading operations team with hands-on experience in driving operational process improvements and technological advancements
- Proven experience implementing and operating within **ITIL** frameworks
- **10+ years** of hands-on **Unix/Linux** experience that includes specific technical experience with **CentOS / Red Hat** systems administration support for large scale distributed environments
- Hands-on experience with incident management, patching, system hardening, and production support
- Experience building and maintaining golden images and standardized environments
- Strong scripting/automation skills (**Python**, **Bash**, **PowerShell** or similar)
- Experience with configuration management and automation tools (**Ansible**, **Terraform**, **Puppet**, **Chef**, or similar)
- Strong understanding of networking fundamentals (**DNS**, **TCP/IP**, firewalls, load balancing)
- Experience with monitoring and logging tools (**Nagios**, **Splunk**, **ELK**, **Prometheus**, **Grafana**)
- Cloud Build-Out or Migration experience in at least one of the following providers **Amazon AWS**, **Google GCP** and **Microsoft Azure**
- **2+ years** with **CI/CD** and automation tools such as **Terraform**, **Ansible**, **Chef**, **Puppet**, **Jenkins**, **GitHub**
- Experience supporting **AI/ML** workloads or data-intensive platforms
- Familiarity with **GPU**-based compute environments (e.g., **NVIDIA GPU** instances)
- Willing to learn new technologies, adopt and adapt to emerging technologies or needs from a project to a project

## Preferred

- Knowledge of security best practices and compliance frameworks such as **NIST 800-53**, **FedRAMP**, **FISMA**
- Certifications such as **ITIL**, **Linux**, **AWS**, **Azure**, or **Kubernetes** (**CKA/CKAD**)
- Networking certifications (**CCNA/CCNP**)

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