University of Chicago
Infrastructure Platform Engineer
Chicago, IL, USA · Mid · Contract
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Files H-1B any time — no cap, no lottery. The 2026 weighted-selection rule doesn't touch it, which makes this the strongest structural path for entry-level talent. Pay is often lower, but your odds of staying are dramatically higher.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
The bottom of this range ($80,000) is below the Level I prevailing wage of $92,789. An H-1B cannot be filed below the prevailing wage, so an offer at the floor of this band could not be sponsored as posted.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
Employer immigration record
from this employer's Department of Labor filings
Files H-1B transfers
Sourced from Department of Labor LCA, PERM and prevailing-wage disclosure data. Employer matching is by name, so figures may be split across an employer's legal entities. Absence of a filing means none appears in our copy of the data, not that none exists.
Community outcomes
No reports yet — be the first to help the next applicant.
About the role
- Plans and executes hands-on maintenance for production servers as well as Windows and Linux servers.
- This is a hands-on role spanning infrastructure automation, private-cloud deployment, platform and service integration, and general Linux system administration.
- This is a hybrid position requiring at least 3 days per week working on site.
Responsibilities
- Design, provision, and operate infrastructure from bare metal upward, including provisioning physical/virtual nodes, deploying and maintaining private cloud platforms (e.g., OpenStack) and virtualization environments (e.g., Proxmox VE), and writing Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
- Perform general Linux system administration: OS installation and security hardening, patching, package and repository management, storage, networking, backups, and monitoring.
- Perform data center activities related to infrastructure under responsibility of this role, such as cabling, installation of physical servers and server components, configuration of out-of-band networking infrastructure, configuration of managed Ethernet switches.
- Stand up and maintain observability (metrics, logging, alerting), respond to incidents, and troubleshoot performance, reliability, and configuration issues across the stack.
- Contribute to and maintain internal documentation (procedures, configurations, runbooks, and architecture).
- Independently scope, investigate, and resolve emerging technical challenges. Evaluate design alternatives against cost, maintainability, and operational impact.
- Maintains complex system and network administration functions. Works with moderate guidance to administer simple systems and assists in the administration of larger systems.
- Performs other related work as needed.
- The job participates in the design of automated, scalable, and rapidly deployable solutions to systems infrastructure and server configuration.
Requirements
- include a college or university degree in related field.
- Experience deploying and operating a private cloud platform (e.g., OpenStack) from scratch.
- Experience with container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes).
- Experience with provisioning bare-metal infrastructure.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and practices.
- Experience with monitoring/observability stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
- Experience with identity/authentication integration (LDAP, SSO, Kerberos).
- Experience installing, configuring, and maintaining scientific or research software.
- Experience with virtualization (e.g., Proxmox VE, VMware).
Nice to have
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Skills
- Knowledge of Linux administration required, RHEL strongly preferred.
- Solid understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, routing, firewalls, VPNs).
- Proficiency in one or more scripting languages (e.g., Python, Bash).
- Familiarity with community research computing tools (e.g., XDMod, ColdFront, Open OnDemand).
- Understanding of security best practices for system hardening and access control.
- Familiarity with data center work, including server installation and troubleshooting.
- Working knowledge of automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or Salt.
- Understand and translate researchers' scientific goals into computational requirements.
- Excellent written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical teams.
- Identify and gain expertise in appropriate new technologies and/or software tools.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
Compensation
- $80,000.00 - $100,000.00 The included pay rate or range represents the University's good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.
- The University of Chicago's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report (Report) provides information about University offices and programs that provide safety support, crime and fire statistics, emergency response and communications plans, and other policies and information.
Benefits
- Yes The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off.
- Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.
- Benefits Eligible
Equal opportunity
- Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-5800 or submit a request via Applicant Inquiry Form.
- Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the
This listing is sourced directly from University of Chicago's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.