System Engineer - Secure Fleet Platform (80–100%)
Location: Zurich / Bern
We are looking for a System Engineer to join the team responsible for the secure operational foundations of Open Systems’ managed security platform.
This role sits at the centre of two strategic engineering initiatives: a complete redesign of our management-access architecture and a modernisation of the connectivity layer that enables secure, reliable operation of a production fleet of approximately 10,000 systems.
You will help build the technical foundations through which engineers and services securely access, configure, operate, update, observe, and troubleshoot this fleet. The work spans Linux-based systems, secure access, authentication and authorisation, networking, automation, configuration, software lifecycle management, and operational tooling.
With close support from experienced colleagues, you will develop toward independent ownership of services and components. You will learn how to make safe changes to a large live environment and build the engineering judgement required for production systems.
You are excited by the prospect of solving difficult production-engineering problems at fleet scale; where security, reliability, automation, and a safe migration path all matter equally.
Key Responsibilities
Secure Management Access Architecture
- Help design, implement, and operate the next generation of secure management access for people, services, and automated operational workflows.
- Build secure, least-privilege, and auditable access paths to production systems, including management gateways, SSH-based access, authentication, authorisation, and related controls.
- Improve the resilience, usability, traceability, and operational safety of privileged access.
- Collaborate with security, platform, and operations teams to ensure the target architecture works in normal operations as well as under incident pressure.
- Contribute to the incremental migration of existing systems and workflows to the new access architecture, with careful rollback and continuity considerations.
Fleet Connectivity and Platform Foundations
- Help redesign the secure connectivity foundation that enables access to, control of, and operation of an approximately 10,000-system production fleet.
- Engineer resilient, scalable connectivity patterns between central platform services and distributed Linux hosts, virtual machines, and related infrastructure.
- Develop automation, observability, and tooling that make fleet-wide changes safe, repeatable, measurable, and recoverable.
- Improve the foundations used for remote management, configuration delivery, software lifecycle management, diagnostics, and incident response.
- Operate and evolve core platform services, including management access, remote connectivity, time synchronisation, Nginx, Redis, and supporting Linux-based infrastructure.
Engineering Excellence and Continuous Improvement
- Learn to own systems through their lifecycle: design, implementation, testing, rollout, operation, incident learning, and continuous improvement.
- Use Git-based development, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and automated testing to deliver reliable changes.
- Collaborate across engineering and Mission Control operations to turn production requirements into practical, supportable platform capabilities.
- Contribute to clear operational documentation, runbooks, and architectural decision-making.
- Evaluate and adopt tools and approaches that improve the team’s security, speed, and reliability.
Required Skills and Experience
Essential / Required Skills
- Linux: Solid practical knowledge of Linux systems, service management, permissions, processes, filesystems, and troubleshooting.
- Networking: Strong understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, SSH, routing fundamentals, and systematic network troubleshooting.
- Secure access: Experience with, or a strong desire to learn, authentication, authorisation, privileged access, VPN or remote-access services, and secure operational practices.
- Automation: Experience with scripting or programming in Python, Go, Bash, Perl, or a comparable language.
- Delivery practices: Experience with Git, code review, CI/CD, and automated or configuration-driven deployments.
- Agentic Development: Hands-on experience using agentic AI workflows (for example GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) to accelerate day-to-day engineering.
Desirable Skills
- Experience with HashiCorp Boundary, bastion or jump-host architectures, PKI, SSH certificate authorities, or comparable access-management technologies.
- Experience with OpenVPN or other remote-access and connectivity technologies.
- Experience with configuration management, infrastructure as code, Helm, Kubernetes, or GitOps.
- Experience operating high-availability or stateful services such as Redis, Nginx, NFS, DNS, or database-adjacent services.
- Experience with RPM packaging, Linux software release processes, or large-scale fleet configuration and rollout.
- Experience with monitoring, logging, alerting, tracing, or production incident response.
What You Bring
- You have completed relevant technical training, a degree, or gained equivalent practical experience.
- You can work confidently in Linux and are motivated to deepen your skills in platform engineering, networking, security, and automation.
- You are keen to contribute to implementation, testing, automation, and safe rollout while learning to take service ownership end to end.
- You ask good questions, learn quickly, document your work, and work carefully with production systems.
Soft Skills
- Quick Learner: Ability to rapidly grasp unfamiliar systems and technologies and apply sound engineering judgement.
- Communication: Ability to explain technical risks, decisions, and operational consequences clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Customer Focus: Awareness that secure and reliable platform operations directly affect internal engineering teams, Mission Control, and customer service quality.
- Collaborative Mindset: Ability to work constructively across security, platform, software engineering, and operations teams.
Education and Experience
- Relevant technical education in Computer Science, Information Technology, Systems Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- Demonstrated interest in designing, automating, and operating reliable systems at meaningful scale.
About Open Systems
Open Systems is a leading provider of Managed SASE solutions, converging network and security functions on a cloud-native platform. Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Zurich, the Swiss cybersecurity company supports businesses and organizations in more than 180 countries with a holistic, customer-centric service model and 24×7 expert support.
Our platform delivers secure, reliable connectivity across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments while providing a seamless experience through an intuitive customer portal. Powered by a centralized data platform and 24×7 managed services, Open Systems helps organizations strengthen security, simplify operations, and accelerate innovation—enabling secure networks that grow with their business.
Discover more at www.open-systems.com.
