** Remote Opportunity **
OVERVIEW: The System Administrator working with our Site Relaiblity Engineering Team will:
Installing and supporting a client organizations servers and network systems.
Gather data to identify customer needs and then use the information to identify, interpret, and evaluate system and network requirements.
Advise clients on best practices and implement.
Our systems administrators work in a small team of 6-10 team members, responsible for 10-15 customer environments. You should be a quick learner and ready to hit the ground running, managing networks and servers for everything from small start-ups to huge enterprises.
Act as an escalation point for the operations team
Create and improve runbooks that are to be used by operations and other team members
Provide detailed documentation for the various tools and environments being supported
In addition to primary responsibilities, which are dynamic in nature, system backup and recovery planning and validation are extremely important aspects of the system administrator responsibility
Manage large systems at scale
Deliver consistency, repeatability and predictability through use of advanced technology in the areas of:
Web server technologies - Apache, Nginx, JBoss, Tomcat
System, network and application monitoring - Nagios, Cacti, Graphite
Configuration management and automation - Puppet, Chef, Foreman
Highly available, scalable architectures - Linux, F5, HA Proxy
Cloud and virtualization - AWS, VMWare
MANDATORY QUALIFICATIONS:
5 years of experience managing production server environments
Solid knowledge of various hardware platforms, such as rack and blade servers, from a wide variety of vendors
Strong system administration skills in a variety of operating systems, primarily Linux (Red Hat and Ubuntu) and Windows (Server 2003 and Server 2008)
Experience working with storage platforms from a variety of vendors
Installation and configuration of applications providing network services, such as: HTTP/HTTPS, NFS, SMTP, SNMP, SSH, NTP, DNS, DHCP
Administration of Apache and IIS web servers
Experience working with virtualization technologies such as VMware (vSphere) and cloud (AWS)
Demonstrated experience working with Nagios
Demonstrated experience working with Cacti or Graphite
An understanding of configuration management software such as Puppet and Chef, their role and how they fit into the broader topics of release management and IT automation
Firm grasp of backup and recovery methodologies, best practices and systems
Demonstrated proficiency with Perl, interpreted languages such as Ruby or Python, and / or bash scripting
Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
Strong communication skills in English; you will talk to customers, vendors and other team members on a regular basis.
A willingness to work on evenings and weekends when necessary and participate in a regular on call rotation.
The willingness to dive in and research/debug tough problems, even under extreme pressure
An intense desire to learn new technologies and techniques
Ability to work independently or as part of a team
Ability to understand client requirements and advise on industry best practices
Interfacing with external customers, strong customer service focus with the ability to manage customer expectations and priorities
ASSETS/NICE TO HAVE SKILLS:
Community contribution to user groups, mailing lists, open source projects
Experience managing networking devices such as switches and firewalls from a variety of vendors
Knowledge of Active Directory, OpenLDAP or other directory services
Architecting and supporting highly available systems, including knowledge of clustering solutions, load balancing, and caching mechanisms
Knowledge of other Linux distributions and / or Unix operating systems such as Solaris, AIX, or HP-UX
Knowledge of other web servers such as Nginx, and application servers such as JBoss or Tomcat
Experience working with virtualization technologies such as Citrix (XenApp)
Knowledge of other virtualization technologies such as OpenStack, KVM or Xen
Knowledge of other network monitoring systems (NMS) such as Opsview, Munin, Zabbix or Zenoss
Knowledge of performance management and trending tools such as Ganglia, New Relic and Server Density would be considered an asset
Project Management, time management, scheduling and coordination
Whitepaper writing, blogging and presenting
PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:
Excellent oral and written communication
Self-motivated and directed, while working in a fast-paced demanding environment
Keen attention to detail
Superior analytical, evaluative, and problem-solving abilities
Very effective organizational skills
Ability to work in a team
Demonstrate sound work ethics
Understanding of current IT service standards such as ITIL
WORKING CONDITIONS:
Participate in on-call rotation and periodic overtime
The incumbent must spend long hours in intense concentration
Stress may be caused by the need to complete tasks within tight deadlines
Must be able to perform context switching in a fast paced environment
EDUCATION: Post-secondary education in computer science, related fields or product certifications would be considered an asset.
DISCLAIMER: An equivalent combination of education and experience, which results in demonstrated ability to apply skills will also be considered. Pythian is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will need to fulfill the requirements necessary to obtain a security check.
Pythian
In a data-driven world, organizations depend on Pythian's peerless expertise to ensure they always have secure, reliable access to the business-critical information they can't do without. Serving retailers, financial institutions, online entertainment companies and organizations in specialized sectors like healthcare, Pythian keeps even the most complex data infrastructures 'always on' and optimized for peak performance.
Our team of top-tier database experts provides design, monitoring, migration and tuning services for all types of production environments, including Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and NoSQL. Headquartered in Ottawa with offices around the globe, Pythian offers a unique, flexible contracting model that allows clients to cost-effectively access the very best database support when and how they need it.