System Engineer 2022

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We’re looking for an experienced System Engineer to join the Fastmail team in our Philadelphia office. We provide email services that are fast, rock solid, and built on ever-evolving Internet standards. That's where you come in!

About the job

Together with the rest of our team, you’ll work on the infrastructure that powers our email services: Fastmail, Pobox, and Topicbox.

We’re looking for a System Engineer to keep those services responsive, functional, reliable, and secure. We value generalists, and you’ll work across many parts of the stack, with easy access to and frequent collaboration with experts in other parts of the system. We also value teamwork, so you’ll work closely with those experts: the development, product, and comms teams — who are also there to support you.

You’ll spend your time hands-on maintaining, improving, and building out the infrastructure that runs our services. Your job will involve:

• Configuring Linux servers and their services
• Configuring network devices
• Deploying changes
• Automating configurations
• Writing system scripts
• Monitoring system performance
• Troubleshooting issues
• Using source control to make changes
• Collaborating with other operators and staff
• Documenting procedures and configurations
• Suggesting solutions to issues and implementations
• Handling incidents when on-call

About you

This role may be great for you if:

• You’ve already spent years managing networks of Linux machines before, handling deployment of custom and off the shelf services, and creating an operational environment that you — and others — could maintain and build on.
• You can get up to speed with just about everything and learn as you go. For the record, though, our systems are mostly Debian. You’ll definitely end up working in Bash (and probably a little bit of Perl). If you’re curious: we also use Ansible, Prometheus, Grafana, MySQL, Nginx, Postfix, Consul, Apache, Cyrus, and of course many other things.
• You know you can do more with a team, and you love working with people who can help you get the job done. You’re happy to spend the time required to get up to speed and collaborate together, because you’ll both see the benefits of doing so.
• You are great when everything is running well. When something goes wrong though, that’s okay. You roll up your sleeves, deal with the problem, and think about how to prevent it from happening again. When nothing is going wrong, you spend your time making sure things stay that way or, just as often, making the things that are going right go even righter. You like this because it makes life better for your coworkers, not just because of its technical perfection.

An ideal candidate has:

• at least three years working on Linux server administration or engineering
• a history of writing system scripts in Bash and other languages
• an understanding of networking
• ability troubleshooting and solving tough system problems
• a history of working autonomously and independently
• experience planning system projects
• been managing on premise infrastructure — servers and networking devices
• qualities of being self-motivated, helpful, thoughtful, collaborative, patient, and professional

Working at Fastmail

This is a full-time hybrid role. Like everyone on our team, you’ll get great benefits.

• 100% covered medical and dental benefits for you from day one
• generous contributions for partners and dependent coverage (also available from day one)
• four weeks of paid time off
• paid sick leave, holidays, and parental leave
• paid sabbatical for long-term staff
• annual professional development budget to fund your own growth
• supportive work environment
• team events to share your passions (from tech tools and user testing to crafts, movies, and games)

This job is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We have a strong in-person culture and are looking for someone who will be on-site and part of that culture. We expect you to be regularly in the office 3 days a week and you are welcome to work your remaining schedule at home or in the office, but we also offer further remote flexibility for life events.

We also have an office in Melbourne, Australia, and we’re in close communication with them. This means that you’ll need to be available for an hour or two of evening calls each week. We are partners, parents and caregivers ourselves, and we understand time-zone flexibility goes in both directions. Talk to us if you’re unsure. At some point during your time here, you’ll have the opportunity to travel to Melbourne, an artsy and charming Australian city!

We encourage employees to write and speak about the great work we do, and to stay engaged with their professional peers. Many staff members choose to attend conferences for learning and networking, and several staff members are regular conference speakers.

You can read about our values, and our blog contains interviews with some of the people who will become your colleagues at Fastmail.

We welcome all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, age, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, disability, or sexual orientation. We can help you relocate to Philadelphia if needed. The thing we can’t help with is a visa or sponsorship. You must already have the right to work in the United States.

Sounds great, what’s next?

Email us at syseng@jobs.fastmailteam.com and send us a resume (as a PDF, please). More importantly, though, have something else to say! Introduce yourself, tell us what interests you in working with Fastmail, let us know what makes you believe you'd be a great fit here, and anything else you want to tell us up front!

Job Type: Full-time