Platform Engineer

As a Site Reliability Engineer (Platform Engineer) at Venntro, you will be helping to maintain, monitor, and evolve the mission critical systems that keep our internal and external applications running - across local, test and production environments.

Our award-winning WhiteLabelDating.com platform is soon to turn 20, and presents a unique and exciting set of challenges.

Looking towards the future, we’re making inroads towards becoming a cloud-first platform, working with partners such as AWS and Cloudflare to solve problems in exciting new ways, and moving towards a containerised (Docker) and IaC defined (Terraform) estate. Meanwhile we continue to work on our traditional estate of dedicated and virtualised Linux devices running services at an enterprise scale - including Apache, MySQL, Nginx, Rabbit, Redis, and Sphinx, amongst others.

Our SREs / Platform Engineers are considered our infrastructure subject matter experts, and act as the bridge between development teams and our platform estate. You will be empowered to effect real change, and encouraged to bring new ideas and solutions to the table. You’ll use your knowledge to help guide developers on technologies or approaches to take for both new and existing projects, whilst working towards improving the overall architecture of the platform.

The ideal candidate for us will have a broad range of experience across a number of modern, typically open-source, web technologies, and is looking for the next step to advance their career. Most importantly, you will be deeply passionate about software engineering, and may even have come up with some creative technical solutions to problems outside of the workplace.

As part of our role of looking after local infrastructure, we also work to help the wider business with IT (Mac OS) support as required, as well as taking the lead on all matters concerning platform security.

The role requires participation in a paid on-call rota, and may be required to support during major incidents and platform emergencies as required - remaining calm under (incident generated) pressure is a bonus.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain software and systems to manage platform infrastructure and applications.
• Work to implement security, reliability, monitoring and performance improvements across local, test, and production infrastructure
• Work alongside the Head of Platform and Senior Platform Engineers to take platform engineering projects from inception to completion, providing feedback to the team and business as required.
• Work closely with our development teams, guiding focus on platform technologies for projects.
• Work closely with the wider business to provide support for infrastructure services.
• Manage deployments to all environments.
• Respond to, diagnose and resolve unexpected platform issues.
• Participate in the on-call rota and provide support during major incidents / emergencies.
• Communicate incidents in a timely and clear way internally and externally as required.
• Assist in IT support across the business as required.

Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

• A strong understanding of how the web works, and its core concepts.
• 2+ years of Linux system administration (ideally RedHat / CentOS / Fedora).
• Good understanding of Bash scripting.
• Experience using Nginx to manage web servers.
• Experience writing (My)SQL to query complex databases, and an understanding of MySQL replication principles.
• Thorough knowledge of source control with Git and GitHub.
• Configuration management or IaC experience (ideally Ansible or Terraform).
• Understanding of both caching and event queueing concepts
• Basic knowledge of networking protocols and concepts, including DNS.

Bonus Requirements:

Whilst not required, these skills are a bonus:

• Development skills in any of JavaScript/PHP/Python/Ruby.
• Previous exposure to the unique issues created at scale.
• VMWare or virtualisation experience.
• Docker or containerisation experience.
• Previous usage of AWS.
• Previous usage of Cloudflare.
• Experience with any of Grafana, Prometheus, Memcached, NAXSI, Redis, Sphinx, Zabbix.
• Understanding of Apache to manage web servers.
• Stronger networking skills / understanding of the OSI model.
• Concepts of ServiceWorkers
• Agile software development experience.
• Experience working with third-party hosting providers, and CDNs.

The successful candidate will be provided with a laptop and complementing hardware but is required to have a desk space, good internet connection and the ability to focus in their home environment.

Benefits

Pension Scheme - You'll join the company pension scheme that offers up to a whopping 10% matched contribution with the option to join workshops and hear advice from experts in the field.

Maternity Package - Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, whether you’ve given birth, adopted or been through surrogacy, we will offer an extremely competitive maternity package to give you the time and space to care for your newborn without worrying about money.

You can take up to 52 weeks maternity leave:

3+ Years Employment:

• 20 weeks (5 months) full pay
• PLUS 12 weeks (3 months) 50% pay
• PLUS 7 weeks statutory pay
• PLUS option of an additional 13 weeks unpaid

6 months to 3 Years Employment:

• 16 weeks full pay
• Plus 8 weeks 50% pay
• Plus 15 weeks statutory pay
• Plus option of an additional 13 weeks unpaid

Paternity Package - It’s important to be there for your loved one and have time to bond with your newborn without worrying about the finances as well - we offer up to six weeks paternity leave! Two weeks full pay as standard, then an option to bolt on two weeks holiday if desired - then an option of an additional two weeks at statutory rate.

Fertility treatment and adoption - We offer unlimited paid time off to attend (or accompany a partner to) fertility, IVF or adoption appointments.

Miscarriage policy - Whether you’re the mother or the father, at a time of such loss we offer five days paid compassionate leave plus the option to bolt on holiday if required.

• Five days paid compassionate leave for women who have a miscarriage
• Five days paid compassionate leave for a father to support a mother
• The option to bolt on holiday for as long as needed
• Phased return to work if required
• Paid leave for any associated or follow-up medical appointments

Pregnancy 
termination - Designed to give all employees (women and partners) the space to process and time to recover with uncapped leave.

Critical Illness / Family Support- For those caring for a family member with a critical illness, suffering with old age, or to provide a loved one with some respite, we offer up to five days paid compassionate leave then holiday or unpaid leave for as long as required plus last minute time off and flexible working options in emergencies.

Bereavement for People and Pets - For any form of loss or bereavement, take as long as you need to look after yourself and your family. As a loose guide we offer five days paid compassionate leave for the loss of a family member and two days paid compassionate leave for the loss of a beloved pet.

Remote Working - We understand that work life balance is important. Work where you feel happiest and enjoy the additional time you have from not having to commute.

Flexible working hours- Juggle your time to look after sick children or elderly family members. We trust you to get your work done, whatever time of the day that happens to be.

Day off on your birthday- Your birthday is all about you! So take a day off on us as a birthday gift and spend the day doing what you love.

Mac equipment- We provide brand new mac equipment. It's important the team are working on the latest and greatest tools and software to make their days enjoyable and productive.

Medical insurance- You'll receive treatment on acute medical conditions, which are those deemed to be curable through treatment. We'll cover the full cost of this benefit.

Life assurance - We'll meet the full cost of this benefit and pay your beneficiary a tax free lump sum up to indicated levels.

Exclusive Discounts - We offer an unbeatable range of discounts and deals at over 30,000 brands through Perks. Online, in-store, utilities, high street retailers, cinema tickets and even travel - there’s something for everyone!

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