Senior Linux System Engineer

Title: Senior Linux System Engineer Location: Amsterdam

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition. 

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

Senior Linux System Engineer

You will join a multidisciplinary Infrastructure Engineering team that owns the core of Adyen's infrastructure: configuration management, mail infrastructure,  and identity and access management. These components sit underneath everything we do. Every engineer, system, and service at Adyen depends on them working reliably and securely.

We are looking for a Senior Linux Engineer with a strong background in identity and access management and security principles, who can strengthen the team and help us keep our infrastructure secure. Zero trust, just-in-time and just-enough access, and clear access policies are central to how we work. Our IAM landscape covers humans, systems, and increasingly AI agents, across on-premise and cloud environments, from small clusters to some of our largest platforms.

If you are an experienced Linux engineer who thinks like an attacker, cares about getting access right, and enjoys owning critical systems in production, this role is for you.

What You'll Do

Your main focus is the identity and access management layer of our infrastructure. You will make sure every person, system, and agent gets exactly the access they need, only when they need it, and that every access decision can be explained and audited.

• Identity & Access Management: Maintain and improve our IAM infrastructure for humans, systems, and AI agents across on-premise and cloud environments, using tools such as Teleport and SPIFFE/SPIRE.
• Zero Trust & Access Policies: Work with zero trust, just-in-time, and just-enough access principles across the infrastructure. Define, refine, and enforce the access policies and models behind them.
• Security & Compliance: Work closely with Security and Compliance teams on access reviews, audits, and hardening, and turn findings into concrete improvements.
• Core Infrastructure: Alongside IAM, support and maintain our other core infrastructure components, including LDAP, Puppet, Ansible, and our mail infrastructure, and keep them stable, secure, and low-maintenance.
• Support & Reliability: Act as an escalation point for access and infrastructure issues, help teams resolve and learn from incidents, and take part in a blameless on-call rotation.
• Collaborate & Upskill: Share your IAM and security knowledge within a multidisciplinary team and across the wider engineering organization.

What We're Looking For

Minimum Requirements:

• 8+ years of hands-on Linux systems engineering in large-scale, high-availability production environments.
• A strong background in identity and access management, with a solid grasp of security principles such as zero trust, least privilege, and just-in-time and just-enough access, and experience turning them into enforceable access policies.
• Hands-on experience operating production services on Kubernetes, identity and access tooling such as Teleport, SPIFFE/SPIRE, HashiCorp Vault, or equivalents, and a good understanding of PKI, short-lived certificates, and mTLS.
• Deep knowledge of LDAP and the Linux authentication stack, including SSSD, PAM, and SSH, as well as identity protocols such as OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and SAML.
• Experience with configuration management at scale (Puppet, Ansible) and with scripting or programming in Bash, Python, or Go.
• Clear communication skills, and the ability to explain access and security decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Highly Desired Skills:

• Experience with IAM in a regulated environment such as financial services (PCI DSS, DORA).
• Experience with Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) systems.
• Familiarity with policy-as-code tools such as OPA, Cedar, RBAC.

Who you are 

You are security-minded and think about how something can be abused before it ships. You prefer simple, reliable solutions over clever ones, and you take ownership of problems until they are solved. You enjoy working in a team with mixed expertise, you share what you know, and you keep learning as identity, security, and AI continue to evolve.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Adyen

We actively seek different perspectives to sharpen our ideas. Our unique culture is a product of our diverse backgrounds and experiences. No matter who you are or where you’re from, you’re welcome to be your true self at Adyen.

If you need accommodations or support during the recruitment process to perform at your best, you’ll have the opportunity to let our team know in your application. We encourage people from all backgrounds and abilities to apply.

What’s next?

Ensuring a smooth and enjoyable candidate experience is critical for us. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process tends to take about 4 weeks to complete, but may fluctuate depending on the role. Learn more about our hiring process here. Don’t be afraid to let us know if you need more flexibility.

This role is based out of our Amsterdam office. We are an office-first company and value in-person collaboration; we do not offer remote-only roles.