Vacancy: System Engineer                                         

About System Engineering

• The System Engineering Department is responsible for the platform that is running the Hyves code, as well as the operational wellbeing of all 3000+ Linux servers and the network between the three datacenters. The company is switching towards a multi-product model and System Engineering is in the process of designing a multi-tenant setup for provisioning, monitoring and other common services.
• Where other companies focus on configuration of the systems, Hyves focuses on ensuring optimal performance of all available systems and their integration. To realize that in a scalable manner, we make extensive use of cutting edge open source technologies.
• The team performs on an academic level, and actively contributes to the open source community.

Job Description

• The System Engineers within Hyves are responsible for the full infrastructure of the Hyves server park, which consists of 3000+ Linux servers and is spread over three physical locations. Most of the traditional system administration has been automated. System Engineering tasks consist of resolving problem, designing and building new application stacks and common services like configuration management and monitoring for a mutl-tenant setup. In all this we work closely together with development.
• For our systems we make use of (and contribute to) open source solutions. Important components of the  platforms are Gentoo, MySQL, Python/flask/celery, php/hiphop, memcached, gearman, redis, puppet, icinga, collectd.
• What are we looking for?
• We are looking for system engineers who have at least two years of system engineering experience, preferably in Web 2.0 companies. They have a passion for Linux and for system engineering. The ideal candidate is comfortable in bash, is not afraid to patch his (or her) own kernel, and has relevant experience with open source products. (S)He is a pragmatic and curious person, and a fast learner. The candidate speaks fluent English and has a driver’s license.

Responsibilities

• Ensure maximum availability and performance of the server infrastructure
• Server and service monitoring
• Performance tuning and capacity planning
• Develop, modify and test system profiles in puppet
• Take part in the 24x7 on-call rotation
• Propose and implement improvements to current setup and think about future setups.
• Stay up-to-date with new technologies and developments

 Requirements

• If you also bring experience in the categories below you get bonus points:-)
• Experience in maintaining a large server park
• Programming experience
• Compiling and packaging software for a linux distribution
• Advanced networking experience

Moving to the Netherlands?

• You are not the first: Hyves employs programmers from all over the world, including France, Spain, Italy, Poland, India, Russia, Germany and Australia. This means the working language at Hyves is English.

Hyves will help you with:

• Housing; for the first three months Hyves takes care of housing, and will help you find a permanent place
• Relocation; you will receive a relocation fee to cover for the costs of moving to Amsterdam
• Paperwork, any burocracy related to your work permit, and help with registering for a bank account and a social security number
• The language; Amsterdam is an international city wit a large expat community, and if you speak English you will be to participate in daily life without any problems. If you are interested in learning Dutch anyway Hyves will offer a course for that.