Linux System Engineer (Splunk) (Brussels)

• Linux Infrastructure Management: Administer, maintain, troubleshoot, and optimise Red Hat Enterprise Linux or equivalent environments across physical, virtualised, and containerised infrastructures.
• Splunk Administration & Engineering: Configure and maintain Splunk environments, including data onboarding, Universal and Heavy Forwarders, indexes, sourcetypes, parsing, field extractions, dashboards, reports, and alerts.
• Incident & Problem Management: Investigate and resolve incidents using Splunk data, system logs, and OS-level diagnostics. Perform root cause analysis and implement long-term corrective actions.
• Monitoring & Performance: Monitor platform health, troubleshoot data ingestion and search issues, establish performance baselines, and improve incident detection and resolution times.
• Automation & Infrastructure-as-Code: Develop and maintain automation using Ansible, Bash and/or Python. Integrate automation into operational workflows and CI/CD pipelines to reduce manual intervention.
• System Lifecycle Management: Manage Linux system provisioning, patching, configuration, updates, and lifecycle activities using enterprise tools such as Red Hat Satellite.
• Container & Virtualisation Support: Support containerised workloads using Podman and OCI technologies, as well as VMware-based virtual environments.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure systems and services remain secure, compliant, and reliable. Support the integration of security events into monitoring and alerting workflows.
• Change & Service Management: Implement changes in accordance with established standards and ITIL-aligned processes, ensuring proper documentation and minimal service disruption.
• Continuous Improvement & R&D: Evaluate new Splunk capabilities, apps, add-ons, and integrations; contribute to prototypes and identify opportunities to improve platform performance and operational reliability.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with infrastructure, network, security, and application teams to integrate data sources, investigate incidents, and coordinate technical solutions.

• Minimum 4 years of experience in IT operations managing Linux-based infrastructure in large-scale enterprise, governmental, or supranational environments.
• Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or equivalent, including end-to-end system lifecycle management.
• Strong knowledge of system administration, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and OS-level diagnostics.
• Hands-on experience with Red Hat Satellite 6.x for provisioning, patching, and lifecycle management.
• Strong experience with Ansible Automation Platform, including playbooks, roles, and automation workflows.
• Solid scripting skills in Bash and/or Python.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code principles, Git-based workflows, and CI/CD pipelines.

Splunk Administration & Engineering

• Minimum 2 years of hands-on experience administering and supporting Splunk in production environments.
• Experience onboarding and maintaining data sources using Universal Forwarders, Heavy Forwarders, apps, add-ons, and standard ingestion methods.
• Practical knowledge of Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL) for searches, dashboards, reports, alerts, and field extractions.
• Understanding of indexes, sourcetypes, parsing, data retention, and role-based access control.
• Experience monitoring Splunk platform health and troubleshooting ingestion, search, and performance issues.
• Knowledge of log aggregation, metrics collection, event correlation, anomaly investigation, and monitoring strategies.
• Ability to use Splunk for incident detection, diagnostics, root cause analysis, and reducing mean time to detect and resolve incidents (MTTD/MTTR).

Infrastructure, Automation & Operations

• Experience working with ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change, and service request management processes.
• Familiarity with Red Hat container technologies, including Podman and OCI containers.
• Experience with VMware virtualisation environments.
• Understanding of integrating automation with monitoring, remediation, reporting, and operational workflows.
• Practical experience with GitLab, Azure DevOps, or similar version control and DevOps platforms.
• Strong focus on monitoring-driven operations, diagnostics, and technical forensics.

Additional / Desirable Experience

• Familiarity with NetApp storage systems.
• Exposure to hardware lifecycle management, including server maintenance, firmware updates, and lifecycle planning.
• Experience with endpoint detection and protection solutions such as Trend Micro Deep Security, ClamAV, or equivalent.
• Understanding of security event integration into monitoring and alerting pipelines.
• Basic operational knowledge of network and security platforms such as Palo Alto, Check Point, F5, and Infoblox.
• Ability to correlate infrastructure, network, and security events to support incident investigation.
• Experience with vendor coordination, technical support processes, and software licensing management.

Long-term freelance contract