Lead DevOps Engineer Full-time

About Us

Best Practical Solutions are the team behind Request Tracker (RT), one of the most popular open source ticketing systems in the world. RT, and its companion application, Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR), are used by organizations large and small, across all industries including: private and public companies, security teams, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits. We’ve been around since 2001 and are entirely self-funded. We are both contributors to, and beneficiaries of, the free software ecosystem; you can find all of our code on GitHub (https://github.com/bestpractical).

RT, being free software itself, is absolutely free to download, deploy, and even modify. We’ve built a business around providing a full range of services to help our customers get the most out of RT. We offer commercial enterprise support, professional installation and upgrades, and custom development where we bring our expertise to address an organization’s specific set of challenges. All of our engagements, whether sponsored by a customer or done for our community, provide the satisfaction of knowing we’re helping people solve real problems every day.

We’re a fully remote company. We coordinate using RT (of course), Slack, and Zoom and we try to get everyone together at least once a year for in-person planning and discussion. Benefits for employees include healthcare and dental coverage, as well as an open vacation policy.

When working at BPS, you can also count on endless opportunities for career growth. With RT’s large codebase, overall breadth of use cases, and variety of services we offer, you will have many opportunities to expand your skill set. In addition to writing code, we also help our customers with a full range of business process support including configuring RT, setting up workflows, and making RT better for people. Not to mention, because everything we do is open source, all of your contributions will be, too.

About the Position

We are looking for a Lead DevOps Engineer to help maintain and continue to build out our managed Request Tracker hosting service.

This role involves all aspects of managing and maintaining Linux servers including building out new servers, patching, applying updates, monitoring, and backup and recovery. Our cloud offering is built on AWS, so the position involves working with AWS services via the Amazon web console and command-line tools. We support standard configurations for typical RT deployments and some more complicated custom architectures for larger RT deployments. The role offers room for growth as we evaluate additional AWS service offerings as possible enhancements for hosted RT customers.

We also offer remote installation and upgrade services to customers for on-premise Request Tracker systems. These engagements involve upgrading older RT systems along with all supporting infrastructure including the Linux OS (multiple types), Apache, the installed database (MariaDB, MySQL, Postgresql, etc.), and email MTAs like Postfix.

Qualifications

• 3-5+ years of experience administering Linux systems, specifically Debian.
• Production management and support of AWS EC2 servers and related services like Route 53, Cloudwatch, etc.
• Strong understanding of how the Internet works including web servers, email servers, certificates, and SSL.
• Knowledge of secure web architectures, secure Linux server deployment, firewall management, and monitoring for security events.
• Experience building and maintaining server automation processes with Ansible.
• Some experience administering and using relational databases like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or Oracle. PostgreSQL specifically is a plus.
• RT is written in Perl, so we tend to lean Perl-ish for many other tools and utilities. You don’t need to be a Perl expert, but it will help if you are familiar and comfortable with it.
• Strong knowledge of git, version control concepts, automated testing.

To Apply
Please send a cover letter and resume to resumes@bestpractical.com.