Job role: senior Linux engineer
You are the technical owner of an organisation's Linux platform: you set standards, write architecture decisions, run hard incidents, grow the team and defend the long-term roadmap.
Level 501 · 14 lessons · 12 practice labs
Lessons
Standards
- The company Linux standard: distribution, release and baseline
- Writing architecture decision records
- Life-cycle policy: end of life and migration schedule
- Short task: write the new server standard and defend it to the team
Hard incidents
- Running a major incident: roles and decisions
- The fault nobody could solve: deep diagnosis
- Escalating to vendor and distribution support with evidence
- Short task: run an incident affecting three teams to the end
Team and roadmap
- Reviewing changes and mentoring the team
- A runbook library and knowledge transfer
- Measuring and prioritising technical debt
- A one-year platform roadmap
- Short task: present the roadmap with cost and risk reasoning
Wrap-up
- Capstone: take over a messy Linux estate, assess it and carry out the transformation plan
Practice labs
- Assess the state of a messy estate: Gather distribution, version and configuration differences across the servers and list the three biggest inconsistencies with evidence.
- Write a server standard and apply it to one host: Write a measurable standard covering accounts, SSH, logging, time and backup and bring one server into line with it.
- Plan drift remediation in stages and run the first wave: In a mixed-distribution environment order the move to the standard by risk, carry out the first wave and report the rise in compliance.
- Map dependencies during a fault on an undocumented service: From the running system extract the hosts, files and scheduled jobs a faulty service depends on.
- Manage an incident spanning several teams: In an incident with network, database and app symptoms determine the responsible tier from evidence and write a clear handoff for that team.
- Derive a systemic fix from a single incident: Starting from an outage caused by an expired certificate, scan the whole estate for similar risks and set up a lasting check.
- Review a teammate's change request: Find the missing test, rollback and risk points in a given change request and write constructive feedback.
- Write a teaching runbook for a junior engineer: Turn a frequent fault into a runbook that explains the reason for each step and shows the decision points.
- Write a six-month infrastructure roadmap with reasons: Weigh risk, effort and gain in the Lodoskaya Denizcilik environment to prepare a prioritised roadmap with measurable goals.
- Record a technical decision with its reasoning: Write a short decision record for the choice of a log collection tool with context, options, decision and consequences.
- Design the migration off a legacy server: Decide for each service on an out-of-support server whether to move, merge or retire it and design the order of migration.
- Present a platform proposal for the estate with a proof: Design a common build, monitoring and backup platform for the messy estate, build a working sample on one server and write up cost and risks.
About this course
You are the technical owner of an organisation's Linux platform: you set standards, write architecture decisions, run hard incidents, grow the team and defend the long-term roadmap.
What you will learn
- Standards
- Hard incidents
- Team and roadmap
- Wrap-up
Prerequisites
You should be experienced in the topics of the same path up to level 401.
Lab environment
Lessons run in your own Kali Linux terminal in the browser, connected to a private lab network. Nothing to install.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this course right for my level?
- The course is at level 501; it assumes you know the topics of the lower-level courses.
- Is there anything to install?
- No. Every lesson runs in your own lab environment that opens in the browser.
- How do lessons work?
- Each lesson has 8 to 10 steps and a short quiz. Early steps show the command to type, later steps give less help; if two attempts fail, the solution opens.
- Can I try it for free?
- Yes. The first three lessons of every course are free.