Role: Senior Systems Administrator / SRE

The Client is looking for someone who has a keen interest in being involved in a creative environment and to take on a high profile role where you will make a real impact on a successful, technology-driven company.

You will play an integral role in support of a small VFX company (~130) in the heart of London to provide expertise in developing monitoring solutions, improving scalability and reliability and partnering with other teams to develop Service Level Objectives and Indicators to help progress the business.

You’ll be empowered to make technology choices and will set the standards on best practice, partnering with stakeholders across the business whilst working closely with the Head of Systems.

The Systems team is responsible for working alongside other teams with the latest in VFX software such as The Foundry’s Nuke, Autodesk’s Maya alongside many other applications and plugins. This includes developing a standardised/consistent CentOS deployment, render farm maintenance, network and data management across workstations, servers, and cloud instances for a large number of Linux and Windows systems. (approx. 200 hosts)

Do you think you will enjoy working with a small team that has a passion for using future technology? Then become a part of a team that helps support each other and help them grow and create some of the best visual effects in the industry.

The Role and Responsibilities:

• Design, Document, and Implement solutions that streamline operational workflows including automated deployment, management and monitoring of services.
• Ensure monitoring systems have high coverage over previously identified KPIs of managed services / platforms
• Leverage change management platforms and integration of CI/CD pipelines to ensure operational continuity
• Maintain clear documentation of standard operating procedures for first line support and escalation flows

Desirable Skills:

• Excellent communication skills - both verbal and written
• Knowledge of Microsoft’s Active Directory.
• Knowledge of local area networking (VLANs, VRFs, Routing)
• Deep understanding of Linux operating systems (CentOS, RedHat preferred)
• Knowledge of AWS/GCP concepts and workflows
• Hands-on experience with debugging and passion for root cause analysis
• Knowledge of monitoring tools, such as ELK, Grafana, and Graphite.
• Virtualisation experience (VMware preferred).
• Working knowledge of GPFS, PixStor, etc.

Personal Attributes:

• Self-motivated, flexible and reliable problem-solving skills.
• Attention to detail: can author clear written procedures and provide technical documentation for supporting teams or stakeholders.
• Ability to work well under pressure and to tight deadlines as part of a team
• Autonomous, resourceful, positive and calm in a production-oriented environment.
• Studious.

More about the Client

They have a lively, friendly team and working environment and are welcoming to all. They have regular hours for this role in the Systems department, there will be an implementation of a rota for a late “on-call” shift.

As a young company that is looking to grow dynamically, they have great opportunities to work on new technology and new tools that have an impact on how they move forward into the future. Eventually, they have roles that are dedicated to working towards such potential projects which include VMware, KVM, Puppet, Ansible, ELK stack, Change Management (Ansible), Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes, and much more. You will be a part of shaping the Client.

They have an open-minded department, and any suggestion or question is always valid amongst them as they believe in progressing everyone’s knowledge and development. the Client has employees who have been here since the very beginning almost seven years ago because of the excellent working environment and the incredible work that they have produced in the past and present. It’s a great mix of creative and technical people, and that makes it an engaging environment to be growing in.