Jenkins home directory issue /home/jenkins/.ssh

I’m using the GitLab plugin for jenkins to clone a repository, the issue is that ‘jenkins’ is a system account with no home directory (the env variable is poinint to JENKINS_HOME=”/var/lib/jenkins”)

And if I try to clone a protected repository I get the error

stdout: 
stderr: Could not create directory '/home/jenkins/.ssh'.
Host key verification failed.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

I tried to move the home directory with usermod but since is not a conventional user account it fails

usermod: user 'jenkins' does not exist in /etc/passwd

And since my home directories are under a NFS I cannot create a symlink between /home/jenkins and /var/lib/jenkins

How can I move/point the system account home directory to /var/lib/jenkins instead of /home/jenkins?

Thanks

usermod -d /var/lib/jenkins jenkins