linux system expert

KBC Group, the parent company of the Hungarian K&H Bank, is a leading European financial group with a focus on providing bank-insurance products and services to retail, private banking, SME and mid-cap clients, in our core countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

The KBC Services and Infrastructure division (SIN) decided on a nearshore HR strategy based on 2 locations: the core internal workforce is based in Belgium and in Hungary. Therefore not only our services are international, but also our teams. Our responsibilities range from day-to-day operation to application development and its operation.

We are constantly expanding the Hungarian side of the team, which is why we are looking for enthusiastic, motivated new employees with junior, medior or possibly senior work experience.

Are you ready to work in a dynamic team in a changing environment? Do you like to take on challenges? Do you like to have a say in the features you’re working on? Then maybe this opportunity is the one you’re looking for.

The team is developing solutions with a main focus on the monitoring and observability of devices, appliances, servers and applications. It is the intention to move more towards solutions that move towards observability capabilities, rather than monitoring.

The users of our solutions are widely spread across KBC as we support a large amount of servers and applications. The type of users mainly are: developers, system engineers, service delivery owners, application owners, etc.

The solutions we offer towards the organization are:

• Observability pipeline for collecting logs and metrics.
• Operational analytics with the Elastic Stack.
• Application Performance Monitoring (APM) using Dynatrace and Elastic APM.
• Infrastructure monitoring.
• Notification and alerting services.

When developing solutions and solving problems, automated solutions are highly valued as this is the mindset of our team. The team builds and maintains solutions that make getting insights from real-time data turnkey and efficient, such as our Infrastructure Monitoring, Log & metrics Analytics, Alerting, etc.

We are also responsible for the implementation of the latest products on our servers (Linux) and maintenance of these servers.

Within our team we also use Red Hat Linux, Ansible and Kafka on a daily basis as they are part of the team’s strategy to automate as much of the ‘system administration’ tasks as possible and avoid manual errors by delivering code that answers to fundamental IT principles. Being part of a bank’s IT infrastructure, security is a must have.

As this job is an expert role, and system administration is a small part of the job, activities are divided into two lists: basic tasks and expert tasks. Naturally, expert tasks are the most interesting part of the job, so we want to give you insights in growth possibilities in your role.

Basic tasks:

• Onboarding our internal customers and keeping our systems “up and running”
• Keeping up with the day-to-day work such as solving critical incidents, fixing bugs, …
• Being a contact point for our internal customer (for new features and/or issues)
• Visualize the metrics we follow up (dashboards)
• Gaining knowledge about all the components in the team so you can find your way around all our tools
• Working within a rotational permanence system (on call)

Expert tasks:

• Designing new features for our components within KBC standards with automation and security in mind
• Diving into a topic and sharing this with the team as we highly value knowledge sharing
• Becoming a key team member by evolving towards a ”subject matter expert”
• Infrastructure as code is the ”next best thing”
• Working closely with the system architect to develop roadmaps and designing (new) architecture
• Being part of projects where the team is involve such as replacing one of our tools, redesigning, …

What you can expect working with us:

• You can make sure your future career is steady within our company
• Life-long learning and plenty of opportunities to challenge yourself
• Competitive salary as well as other benefits such as:
• 10% customizable cafeteria,
• annual performance-based reward,
• company phone with mobile internet, that you can use for private purposes as well
• employee discount at the bank
• Medicover
• Your English language skills won’t be worn out as you can use it on a daily basis
• Flexible schedule as we don’t use ‘Clock in Clock out’ system 
• As our focus is on teamwork we consider it important to hang out in the "open office" together, but you have the option to spend 3 days per week working from home
• We value your insight and are always open to suggestions
• International environment with a cheerful work atmosphere
• Green office in Millennium Park, equipped with:
• bicycle storage and showers
• restaurant with panoramic views over the Danube and the National Theatre
• free coffee and snacks in our community area where we hang out and play darts, and many dining options in the surrounding area

What we expect from You:

• You have a bachelor's or master's degree in IT or a number of years of relevant experience.
• You are a true team player with a hands-on approach.
• Being able to work independently (with documentation at your disposal and coaching in the beginning)
• The use of customer-friendly communication.
• Experience with Linux system administration.
• Having experience with Ansible and having a mindset to exploit automation opportunities.
• Affinity and interest in monitoring tools.
• Knowledge of one of the following tools is seen as an advantage: Elastic, Elastic APM, Dynatrace, Kafka and/or advanced Linux skills. Experience with managing monitoring and observability (tools) is also a plus.
• Your verbal and written skills in English are excellent. You can communicate easily with colleagues in different parts of our organization.
• Participating in the on call rotation system.

What you can expect during the recruitment process:

• After sending your CV in English, expect a three-round interview process, one online with our local recruiter,  one online in English with the Belgian team leader, and the final round is in person at our office in Budapest (in Hungarian) to get to know each other better.
• An efficient selection process is important for both of us, so we try to make it as fast as possible, and even if you are not selected we will give you a detailed feedback.