Senior Systems Engineer

at Automattic

📍 World

USD 120,000-180,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ Remote

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

Debugging @ 4 MySQL @ 4 Networking @ 4 Nginx @ 4 PHP @ 4 Security

Details

Automattic is seeking a systems engineer to deliver high availability, performance, and security for services handling tens of billions of page views and more than a billion web surfers each month across private data centers in locations on six continents. The role is part of a small, vertically integrated Systems team responsible for managing a large-scale global infrastructure.

Responsibilities

Maximize service availability and uptime through proactive planning, sound architectural decisions, automation, and rapid response to failures.
Optimize server-side and client-side interactions to improve service performance, including collaboration with third-party services where necessary.
Protect users and employees through proactive monitoring and enforcement, real-time response, and maintenance of data integrity and backups for disaster recovery.
Remove friction between Automattic developers and shipping software by providing rapid technical answers and support.
Autonomously architect, prototype, and maintain solutions for different problems and hosting requirements.

Requirements

Experience maintaining large Nginx setups with advanced routing configuration, load balancing, reliable performance, and high availability.
Experience operating very large MySQL or MariaDB deployments while maintaining performance, uptime, and data integrity.
Experience running and debugging PHP applications at scale.
Understanding of lower-level systems stacks, including filesystems, networking, memory management, and kernel internals.
Deep operational and maintenance experience with large and complex public-facing web hosting systems.
Extreme attention to detail and a commitment to operational excellence.
Openness and availability for two to three weeks of post-COVID travel per year to meet teammates in person.