[ALE-jobs] Anchor Systems: Systems Administrator Required

[Patrick Carey]

Tired of talking to customers? Interruptions from colleagues? Need some 
solace?

If you are looking for a bit of a mixed buffet which allows you time to 
be a sysadmin (with a twist of BOFH), hack on interesting projects, 
build (and maintain!) infrastructure, support our lovely customers (and 
the not so lovely ones), then sir/madam, we have a tasty opportunity for 
you.

If you enjoy:
  * Wearing a suit and tie to work;
  * Vendor “certifications”;
  * Being abused by cPanel/Plesk.
  * Spending hours on the phone.
Then this job ad is not for you.

Anchor is looking for an enthusiastic and talented Systems Administrator 
to join our team of talented systems gurus. Yes, we used the word 
talented twice.

This is a remote working role. We're looking for a candidate from any 
east coast USA location. Anchor is an Australian (a small island on the 
other side of pacific, keep going past Hawaii) company with a 
predominantly Australian customer base. We're looking to the east coast 
of the USA because it corresponds with with the nasty hours of the 
morning to deal with monitoring alerts down under (midnight to 8am).

Whilst response to monitoring will only make up a small part of your 
daily routine (typically 5-10 events requiring response per day) you'll 
be ensuring the team in Australia get to sleep through the night so they 
can start bright and early and catch up with gossip at the end of your 
shift each day.

We're obsessed with documentation and most of the office communication
is via internal chat so you won't be left out of the loop.

In this role, whilst helping manage the hundreds of servers entrusted to 
our care using a combination of open source and custom systems 
automation tools, you will have the opportunity to learn best of breed 
practices, play with and evaluate the latest technology, and overall 
improve your skills and abilities.

Responsibilities and skills required for the role include:
  * Excellent communication skills with understanding of the need to
    communicate things that people may need to know before they ask you
    (ESP/prescience a bonus).
  * Intermediate/advanced Linux/Unix skills. Windows (optional).
  * Intermediate knowledge of TCP/IP networking.
  * Configuration of system services including Apache, BIND, Postfix, 
MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others as required.
  * Experience with RHEL/CentOS/Debian.
  * Experience and understanding of security best practices and theory.
  * Obsessive-compulsive attention to detail.
  * Excellent testing, troubleshooting, debugging, and analysis skills.
  * Maintenance of shared and dedicated hosting servers; applying 
security updates, scheduling outages, responding to monitoring systems, 
and system troubleshooting.
  * Support for managed server customers via email and telephone (in
emergencies).
  * Obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. Really.

Tertiary qualifications in computer science or equivalent highly 
desirable. Programming experience and understanding of computer theory 
is desirable.

You can work from home if you like, or find hot desk with your favourite
geek/tech company if IMing and IRC doesn't cut it for regular social
contact.

We share a funky office in downtown Sydney which you'll be introduced to 
in your month long trip to Australia to get you trained up and 
familiarised with the rest of the team.

Working from home or working remotely isn't always for everyone. A
demonstrated ability to work in such an environment will assist you
greatly in your application.

A very brief introduction to Anchor:

  * We're not your average web hosting company. We're more of a boutique
vendor with a focus on hosting complex applications.
  * 80% of the people employed at Anchor are in systems administration or
    technical support roles.
  * One of the core differences is that we manage applications all the 
way up to the code.
  * We don't use server management tools like CPanel, Plesk etc. 
Everything happens on the command line.
  * We make extensive use of configuration management systems such as 
Puppet.
  * We rely predominantly on open source applications to run our 
business. We do some Windows hosting because our clients want it but we 
have a specialist Windows team to look after it.
  * We're focussed on working with large, complex hosted applications.
  * We currently manage around 500 servers (which is not so small by
Australian standards).
  * For more insights check out our blog (http://anchor.com.au/blog) and 
wiki (http://anchor.com.au/wiki)

The position is full-time, and available for immediate start.

If this sounds like an opportunity for you, please send all resumes and
CVs to jobs at anchor.com.au