System Administrator

Company Description

ABOUT TED 

TED is a non-profit that believes Ideas change everything. Powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us: to feel something, to think differently, to take action.

At TED, we seek to bridge, include, and diversify because we truly believe ideas are for everyone. It is important to us to attract individuals from diverse backgrounds who are curious about the world.

Job Description

TED creates, produces, and distributes audio and video media (most famously TED Talks) to millions of people worldwide. As a System Administrator, you will be responsible for the day-to-day operations, monitoring, issue resolution, and incident management within TED’s enterprise-scale technology environment. You will assist developers in deploying and monitoring software products, as well as configuring and managing shared infrastructure-level products. You will work directly with software engineers on the Technology team, technical contacts throughout the company, and key vendors. In addition, you will be comfortable managing a small scale in house data center and an in-office network.

An ideal candidate:

• Works well as part of a distributed team, complementing the skills, strengths, and experience of the TED Technology team. Task prioritization and focus are critical in this role. 

• Has a strong bias to action, is driven by a deep curiosity about technology, and enjoys creating maintainable solutions to interesting problems.

• Brings urgency to problem-solving and paying down technical debt with a chase-and-attack mindset.

• Is a self-starter who can identify and resolve service issues, remove blockers, and deliver products.

• Exudes confidence and poise under pressure and genuinely enjoys managing both hardware and software.

• Has a growth mindset – you will learn by doing, expanding your skill set.

• Holds themselves to high standards for precision work. At TED, we use retrospectives and blameless postmortems to drive continuous improvement.

• Is a skilled debugger who thrives in complex environments, involving a mix of SaaS, in-house software, and emerging technologies.

• Values cross-functional collaboration and a diverse workplace.

Job Responsibilities:

• Develop, maintain, and execute runbook procedures to ensure process consistency.

• Be service-oriented, responsive, and proactive in addressing incidents and blockers as they arise, ensuring TED Tech stays online and advancing with maximum uptime.

• Design and manage continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) workflows.

• Perform common database administration tasks (backups, user management).

• Ensure 24x7x365 service availability for deployed applications, including reasonable on-call responsibilities. Design new systems to meet performance, security, and availability requirements and uphold these standards within TED’s technology environment.

• Collaborate with software developers to build, maintain, and debug systems and developer toolchains for both local development and shared infrastructure.

• Serve as a subject matter expert (with the rest of the team) in infrastructure technologies such as DNS, CDN, Linux, MySQL, AWS, and Docker. This role requires a natural curiosity and dedication to continuous learning, enabling you to quickly adapt to new developments in the field.

• Assist technical contacts across the company in integrating third-party or agency-developed applications. Act as a primary point of contact for TED staff, partners, and technology service providers.

• Clearly communicate technical constraints and opportunities to stakeholders.

• Support and mentor other engineers through constructive, collaborative code reviews.

• Contribute to the team’s overall effectiveness, demonstrating flexibility and willingness to support projects outside of core responsibilities as needed.

• Travel as occasionally required.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of verifiable professional experience in Linux or Unix system administration.

• At least 3 years of experience with core AWS services (Linux on EC2, S3, RDS) and/or strong fundamental knowledge of commercial cloud offerings.

• Experience in installing and maintaining Linux systems (physical, virtual, and Docker images) at scale (Ubuntu, CentOS, Alpine).

• Production experience with container orchestration systems (Docker Swarm, ECS, Kubernetes) and deploying web applications using Linux Containers.

• Familiarity with using a CDN to enhance website performance and reduce costs.

• Comfortable reading and writing code in languages such as Ruby, Go, Python, and Bash.

• Proficiency in creating and maintaining high quality technical / process documentation

• Commitment to high standards for precision work, including utilizing retrospectives and blameless postmortems for continuous improvement.

Additional Information

Salary Range: $105,000 - $135,000

Strong preference for candidates who can work on-site at our NYC office at least 3 days per week.

TED Conferences LLC is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We invite all qualified candidates to apply online with their resume.