Director of Linux Engineering and Operations - Cary, United States

When you join MetLife’s Global Technology team, you’ll be part of a forward-thinking group dedicated to shaping the future of digital solutions for customers worldwide. You’ll develop, maintain and support technology applications and delivery, leveraging AI, automation, and contemporary ways of working to enhance experiences and drive business outcomes. Your work will simplify complex processes, improve tech resiliency, and ensure high-performing, seamless solutions that power life’s most important moments. In this dynamic environment, you’ll collaborate with talented peers across teams and functions, expanding your skills in impactful ways. Ready to push boundaries and set new industry standards? Join us and help drive the future of technology forward.

The Director – Linux Engineering & Operations is responsible for leading the global Linux platform and operations capability, ensuring the reliability, scalability, security, and resilience of critical hosting services across MetLife’s enterprise. This role oversees Linux infrastructure engineering and operational excellence through strong Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles across multiple regions.

Guided by our purpose – always with you, building a more confident future – and MetLife’s New Frontier strategy focused on stronger growth, attractive returns, and all‑weather performance, this is a highly visible leadership role addressing some of the firm’s most important technology platforms. The successful candidate will modernize how Linux and virtualization platforms are engineered and operated, elevate service reliability, and introduce new perspectives that balance technical depth with business outcomes. This role is ideal for a proven leader who can ramp quickly, bring fresh insight, and lead with confidence, clarity, and accountability.

What Success Looks Like (First 12–18 Months)

• Establish a modern, global operating model across all Linux platforms with automation-first workflows
• Deliver measurable improvements in platform reliability, incident response time, and change success rates across the global Linux estate
• Build a high-performing, globally distributed team with clear development paths and a culture of engineering ownership
• Drive operating system currency to eliminate legacy versions to achieve N and N-1 currency position

• Lead the global Linux Engineering & Operations organization, providing technical and operational leadership across enterprise Linux platforms environments. Set clear direction, priorities, and accountability for platform performance and reliability.
• Create a modern Linux operating model grounded in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, including automation-first practices, infrastructure-as-code, standardization, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Oversee the stability, availability, security, patching, and lifecycle management of Linux platforms, ensuring alignment with enterprise risk, compliance, and resiliency expectations.
• Manage large-scale global infrastructure operations, capacity planning, major incident response, and post-incident analysis, driving systemic fixes and measurable improvements in service health.
• Drive infrastructure-as-code adoption and GitOps-driven workflows across the platform, leveraging tools such as Ansible Automation Platform, Terraform, and related orchestration frameworks.
• Establish and mature observability practices across the platform estate using modern tooling (e.g., Elastic, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry), ensuring actionable alerting, end-to-end visibility, and data-driven capacity decisions.
• Manage hardware vendor relationships, lifecycle strategies, and procurement planning across the on-premises compute and storage footprint, contributing to vendor diversification and cost optimization initiatives.
• Develop high-performing engineering leaders and teams, fostering strong technical depth, sound engineering judgment, and a culture that balances operational discipline with innovation and customer focus.
• Coordinate closely with application, middleware, database, cloud, security, and SRE teams to ensure platform capabilities align with business needs, architectural standards, and technology roadmaps.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience) and demonstrated leadership in large-scale enterprise infrastructure environments.
• Deep expertise in Linux platforms (e.g., RHEL) including engineering, operations, lifecycle management, and platform standardization at scale.
• Experience with VMware virtualization environments, including migration planning or platform transitions to alternative virtualization technologies.
• Strong working knowledge of SRE concepts, including reliability engineering, automation, observability, incident management, and continuous improvement.
• Proven ability to operate in complex, regulated enterprise environments with strong focus on availability, security, and risk management.
• Ability to rapidly assess situations, make informed decisions, and lead with confidence during both steady-state operations and high-pressure events.

• 12–15+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, operations, or platform leadership roles within large enterprise environments.
• Red Hat certifications such as RHCE, RHCA, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform specialist
• Prior experience leading global teams across multiple regions and time zones.
• Experience with hybrid cloud strategies, particularly integrating on-premises Linux and container platforms with public cloud services (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services).
• Familiarity with modern observability platforms and practices (Elastic, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and infrastructure-as-code tooling (Ansible, Terraform, GitOps workflows).
• Demonstrated success modernizing legacy platforms while maintaining operational stability.
• Experience partnering with senior executives and translating technical topics into business-relevant insights.
• Experience managing hardware vendor relationships, lifecycle planning, and procurement strategies across enterprise compute and storage platforms.
• Strong leadership presence with a pragmatic, outcomes-driven mindset and a bias for action.
• Track record of building durable platforms and teams that scale, adapt, and continuously improve.

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The expected salary range for this position is $140,000 - $185,000. This role may also be eligible for annual short-term incentive compensation. All incentives and benefits are subject to the applicable plan terms. 

Benefits We Offer About MetLife MetLife is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions are made without regards to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, genetic information, citizenship status (although applicants and employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States), uniformed service member or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law (“protected characteristics”).