Job offered: Principal Systems Engineer

Type: Full-time
Location: Baltimore, MD USA

Principal Systems Engineer

Baltimore

Blackboard helps shape the future of education by delivering technology and services solutions that transform the learning experience.  We continually innovate to better enable educators, parents, and learners of all types to teach, learn, connect and communicate whenever they want and wherever they are.  We partner with educational institutions globally in the higher education, K-12 and professional education markets to improve the education experience both inside and outside the classroom by facilitating access to information, enabling stronger student engagement and collaboration, enhancing communication, and supporting student safety, success and institutional effectiveness.  Most importantly, we help students achieve their full potential through access to lifelong learning.

 

POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES

Moodlerooms, the Open Source Technology Operations team is responsible for delivering eLearning services to over a thousand clients comprising almost 4 million users worldwide and includes support, administration and client liaison. A passion for technology and the desire to "do it once, do it right” underpin the culture of the team.

The Principal Systems Engineer will play a central role in the success of the group. 

Specifically s/he will:

  • Research, design, develop and document solutions implement solutions for fault, performance, capacity, and configuration management for various data center operations. 
  • Oversee the implementation of these solutions under the direction of the Manager, Operations, and provide technical input as and if required.
  • Identify production stability concerns via break point, vulnerability scanning and impact analysis, and design and develop implement remediation plans to address these concerns.
  • Design, develop and implement documentation or tools to facilitate Technical Support team responsibilities. 
  • Mentor Technical Support team on technical aspects of supported applications.
  • Design, develop, and implement documentation or tools appropriate to the maintenance of application platforms.
  • Provide Tier 3 support to issues escalated from the Tier 2 Systems Administrator and Client Engagement teams.  Interface with development teams to resolve Tier 2 and Tier 3 'in code' issues.  
  • Provide on-call support for escalated off-hours issues.
  • Identify opportunities for further automation of aforementioned activities.  Look for synergies within the production environment from the perspective of complexity, cost, and maintenance activity reduction.
  • Execution and maintenance of internal SLAs developed with business stakeholders.

Whilst the role is fundamentally a technical one, the position involves a significant amount of written and verbal communication with both external and internal clients.

The successful candidate will be someone who is willing to take challenges and responsibilities on-board, and provide continuous input into how the Open Source group can further improve and deliver upon its client services.

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS 

REQUIRED SKILLS:

  • Minimum 8 years experience in a Unix/Linux systems administration role, with particular emphasis on Red Hat Linux, Debian, or their variants.
  • Proven professional experience in architecting, administering and maintaining multi-tier application systems in a production environment. 
  • A demonstrated ability to document these systems in a format understandable by both technical and non-technical internal and external clients.
  • An ability to rapidly deconstruct systems having minimal supporting documentation, then speak to performance capabilities/bottlenecks, break points requiring monitoring, and other issues.
  • Scripting and automation expertise in Bash and Ruby.
  • Heavy exposure and expertise in the use of configuration and automation tools such as Puppet, Chef, SolStack or CFEngine.
  • Demonstrated interpersonal, communication, analytical and problem solving skills, and short term and long term planning skills.
  • An ability to work collaboratively with and lead other technical staff.
  • Fluency in written and spoken English are required, other languages a plus.
  • An ability to operate with minimal supervision, and to complete tasks to deadline.
  • Mentor, coach, and peer review within the Operations team.

PREFERRED SKILLS:

  • Relevant tertiary qualifications or equivalent commercial experience
  • Experience with code review and continuous integration tools.
  • Experience working with highly virtualized environments.
  • Experience working in or with a University, TAFE or RTO desirable.
  • Familiarity with ITIL incident, problem and change management processes an advantage.

Some after hours and weekend work will be required as a part of the role.

This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are

required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties

and responsibilities at any time.


Entry added by Sandy Burns - 14 Oct 2014
Last updated - 14 Oct 2014