Senior Site Reliability Engineer

The IT & Technical Services department's Operations team is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to support the growing portfolio of services it provides to EMBl-EBIs service and research teams. The Operations team is responsible for maintaining and developing the Institutes Transfer Services , the application and monitoring systems for our software defined object storage, the authentication and authorisation infrastructure (which is federated with embl.org), as well as a number of services we have recently assumed management of, which include email (postifx, cyrus, roundcube, mailman) and the Request Tracker ticketing system.

Due to the varied nature of this role, it may suit an individual with experience in a hands-on systems management role, a Senior Infrastructure Engineer, or someone from a site reliability engineering background. The role will initially focus on the email systems - understanding and upgrading the infrastructure, but is expected to rapidly expand to jointly supporting the rest of the services owned by the team.

The Operations team leverages on other teams in the IT & Technical Services at EMBL-EBI; an IT department of around 80 multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary staff, at different levels of their IT career. We are eager to welcome new talent who will join us in ensuring reliability and supporting EMBL-EBI's mission to advance scientific discovery.
Your role During the first months, the role will focus on the upgrade of postfix, cyrus, roundcube and mailman.
After some months the new joiner is expected to help maintain and evolve the distributed Check_mk monitoring system.
By the end of the first year the new member will be fluent with the orchestration infrastructure other teams use to deploy and update more than 3000 servers (including gerrit, foreman, rpm repositories, and other puppet supporting systems). The orchestration infrastructure responsibilities include the maintenance and improvement of all core puppet modules like ntp, sssd, including templates for new RedHat OS versions as they become available. The team is actively upgrading the Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure for identity management of one thousand internal accounts and up to 30 thousand virtual accounts; it is hoped the new joiner will play an active role in this project also..
Last but not least, the role will include providing documentation and Standard Operation Procedures to enable our Service Desk team to support as much as possible of the above, so tickets dont rise to our team and user service experience is as smooth as possible.
Collaboration and shared responsibility are at the heart of our success. We are looking for a senior technical linux-focused self-starter who can take robust responsibility for tasks, someone who thrives in an environment that values initiative and individual ownership. The responsibility will ultimately be at the team level, and we expect from our candidates that they are able to teach what they know, as well as learn from others. All team members actively contribute to sprint planning and reporting, and the scrum roles rotate across the team on a voluntary basis.

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer position will contribute to helping us move towards more automation of the production environment, while helping guide other members of the team and assisting with day-to-day work prioritisation.
You have At least 5 years hands-on experience with linux production systems (if this experience is with on-premise hardware that would be even better).
Experience with postfix mail systems.
Orchestration and automation is one of your existing skills and you want to develop it further.
A strong sense of responsibility and ethics.
Experience with 389 directory server or openldap.
Puppet expertise (and maybe Saltstack too).
You are comfortable with tcpdump, strace and log parsing at scale.
Experience reviewing Python or Go code created by other team members.
You are used to taking on high-level responsibilities, and guiding others
You might also have A desire to contribute to scientific research from an IT perspective.
Experience within a high performing team.
Want to work in a 9-5 work environment with impact on research 24x7.
Apply now! Benefits and Contract Information
Financial incentives: depending on circumstances, monthly family/marriage allowance of £260, monthly child allowance of £314 per child. Non resident allowance up to £532 per month. Annual salary review, pension scheme, death benefit, long-term care, accident-at-work and unemployment insurances

Hybrid working arrangements

Private medical insurance for you and your immediate family (including all prescriptions and generous dental & optical cover)

Generous time off : 30 days annual leave per year, in addition to eight bank holidays

Relocation package including installation grant (as applicable)

Campus life: Free shuttle bus to and from work, on-site library, subsidised on-site gym and cafeteria, casual dress code, extensive sports and social club activities (on campus and remotely)

Family benefits: On-site nursery, child sick leave, generous parental leave, holiday clubs on campus and monthly family and child allowances

Contract duration: This position is a 3 year contract renewable to 9 years

Salary: UK Equivalent £55,920.00 (Total package will be dependant on family circumstances)

International applicants: We recruit internationally and successful candidates are offered visa exemptions. Read more on our page for international applicants.

Diversity and inclusion: At EMBL-EBI, we strongly believe that inclusive and diverse teams benefit from higher levels of innovation and creative thought. We encourage applications from women, LGBTQ+ and individuals from all nationalities.

Job location: This role is based in Hinxton, near Cambridge, UK. You will be required to relocate if you are based overseas and you will receive a generous relocation package to support you.

To apply, please submit a covering letter and CV via our online system. Applications will close on 09/06/#####.

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