Senior Systems Engineer

POSITION TITLE:          Senior Systems Engineer

DEPARTMENT:              System Operations Center

REPORTS TO:                 Director of Department

FLSA STATUE:                Full-Time, Exempt, Benefited

Position Summary:

A Senior System Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining complex infrastructure, including physical server, network, and virtual environments, to ensure high availability and performance. This position is expected to troubleshoot complex system issues, optimize performance, and collaborate to enhance security, automation, and scalability.

Position Type/Expected Hours:

Full-time (40 hours per week), exempt position. Typical schedule is Monday through Friday 8am-5pm or 9am-6pm Pacific. Occasional late night or early morning work may be required as job duties demand.  The ideal candidate will be able to work in office at least once a week in Santa Rosa, CA but otherwise open to remote, hybrid or in-office.

Travel:

Travel is not typical for this position but may occasionally be required.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

Senior Systems Engineers may have team lead functions and be expected to coordinate and lead other team members on projects and day-to-day tasks.

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• End to end responsibility for Sonic’s Production Infrastructure and Systems

• Server and service monitoring, including quality of service monitoring
• Ensure the continuous availability of critical internal and public facings services
• Mentoring and supporting other team members
• Participate in after-hours on-call rotation

Technical Skills Required:

• Minimum 10+ years of relevant work experience
• Expert level knowledge and experience in administration of Linux (RedHat) and BSD variants
• Expert knowledge managing core internet service applications, such as:

• PowerDNS, Bind, Apache, Sendmail, Dovecot, Nginx,
• MySQL, Postgres, HAProxy, Redis, LVS, etc

• Expert knowledge of hardware and virtualization platforms including VMware, Proxmox and/or libvirt.
• Expert knowledge of  and practical implementation of security best practices and effective policies.
• Experience supporting enterprise storage platforms such as NetApp, Tintri, TrueNAS, ZFS, etc.
• Experience operating and managing enterprise backup and disaster recovery systems.
• Experience with Ansible and/or other configuration management and automation systems.
• Solid programming and  scripting in languages such as Perl, Python, PHP, C, and shell.

Education and Experience:

• Minimum 10+ years of relevant practical work experience.

Compensation Details:

Starting salary:  $145k, range dependent on experience

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.  The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is constantly required to sit; key/type. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools or controls; reach with hands and arms; balance; stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl; talk or hear. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by the job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.

Equal Opportunity:

Sonic is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of race, color, religion or belief, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, pregnancy or maternity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. 

Acknowledgement:

Sonic is an at-will employer. The job description does not constitute an employment agreement, or contract, between the employer and employee and is subject to change.   Other functions may be assigned and/or reassigned by the employer as the needs of the employer and requirements of the job change. The only employment contract that exists between you and Sonic is that of at-will employment. Employee signature below constitutes employee's understanding of the requirements, essential functions and duties of the position.

Minimum Qualifications:  

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.