Senior System Administrator

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world.

EFF is seeking a full-time Senior System Administrator to build and maintain the organization’s digital infrastructure as part of the Technical Operations Department.

Essential Functions:

• Design, Development, and Deployment (70%)
  • Designs and delivers production Linux platforms, network infrastructure, services, and network-attached devices (including phone & conference systems).
  • Deploys hardware systems, cloud platforms, and hosted services, as appropriate.
  • Assists the Public Interest Technology and Engineering & Design teams on site and project deployments.
  • Collaborates with and mentors other Tech Ops team members on system design, documentation, code review, and direct training.
• Monitoring and Maintenance (30%)
  • Participates in a regular on-call rotation and incident response, including 24x7 response for critical services.
  • Responds to support requests within team-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
  • Reviews and responds to potential security incidents affecting EFF’s digital infrastructure and data.
  • Keeps systems updated by applying patches and best practice configurations.
  • Configures and administrates system accounts and access privileges.
• Other projects and tasks determined in collaboration with the Techops

Qualities We’re Seeking (i.e. Competencies)

Successful candidates bring these qualities:

• Deep respect for user privacy and organizational security.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong team player with experience working in collaborative settings, who is also able to put team needs first while also managing independent projects.
• Demonstrates care and respect toward coworkers, outside partners, members of the public, donors, and others with whom this role interacts.
• Able to positively and collaboratively resolve conflicts and overcome challenges.
• Be available and responsive to colleagues, outside partners, and others over email, phone, and online chat, with the ability to respond reliably to time-sensitive requests for assistance and other opportunities during agreed upon work hours.
• Contributes to the creation of a diverse, equitable and inclusive work culture that encourages and celebrates differences including race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability and socio-economic circumstance.

Required Education & Experience:

• Extensive experience with systems administration, operations engineering, or other engineering experience providing deep exposure to Linux environments.
• Experience with shell scripting/programming to automate system administration tasks. The team currently includes Python, bash, Go, and Ruby users, but fans of other languages are more than welcome.
• Experience deploying and maintaining computer network hardware (including switches, routers & firewalls).

Preferred Education & Experience:

• Experience managing cloud infrastructure (such as Digital Ocean, AWS, etc) including the configuration and maintenance of virtual servers & load balancers.
• Working knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools (such as Docker, Kubernetes).
• Knowledge of configuration management tools (such as SaltStack, Puppet, Chef, Ansible).
• Experience collaborating with small- to mid-sized teams (e.g. up to 30 people) on engineering projects and processes.
• Knowledge of DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment processes.
• History of open-source contributions (such as bug reports, pull requests, projects/packages).

Classification: Exempt, Union, Full-time (40 hours/week)

Compensation: $115,000 to $125,000 DOE

Expected hours of work: Typically Monday - Friday plus on-call monitoring on rotation

Reports to: Technical Operations Director

Supervisory responsibilities: None

Physical Demands: This position requires the ability to lift up to 50 lbs on occasion. Location: Must be able to commute to San Francisco for on-call incidents and occasional planned on-site projects. Otherwise, work may be completed from home or the office as preferred.

Commitment to Diversity

As an advocacy organization, EFF is committed to being part of a diverse community. Diversity of life experiences makes a big difference in how we identify and litigate legal issues, design privacy-enhancing software, and organize our activism. To that end, we deliberately seek applicants with different perspectives, identities, and experiences to build an inclusive workplace to better inform our advocacy and defense of freedom in our digital world. EFF is an equal opportunity employer and encourages people of all races, genders, ages, abilities, orientations, ethnicities, and national origins to apply.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.