DonorsChoose.org: Systems Engineer

Location: New York, NY
URL: www.donorschoose.org/careers

DonorsChoose.org is seeking an energetic, team-oriented, and self-motivated Systems Engineer to manage the technical infrastructure that underpins our unique philanthropic marketplace. This position will report directly to our CTO and will play a central role in an agile organization that is serious about technology.

The right candidate will be comfortable in our start-up atmosphere and ready to play a key technical role on a small, dedicated team. This Systems Engineer will help us deploy frequent site updates and work closely with software engineers to keep our integrated systems running smoothly.

The Systems Engineer will be joining a charity with deep private-sector management experience. The DonorsChoose.org team is smart, committed, and passionate, and the work environment is informal, fast-paced, and fun.

Candidate Must:

• Administer and operate our production, pre-production, and QA server environments
• Deploy scheduled site updates and hotfixes
• On call for live site emergencies and own troubleshooting run-book
• Manage batch jobs, monitoring (eg. CloudKick, Pingdom), backups, DNS, SSL certs, MTA (eg. Postfix), etc
• Automate routine tasks
• Manage 3rd party software packages and services: Apache, Tomcat, nginx, HAProxy, Squid, Akamai
• Support internal development tools, eg. source control, bug base
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies to enhance our 5-year-old application

Candidate Possesses:

• 5+ years related experience
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Exceptional problem-solving skills and enthusiasm for tackling diverse challenges
• Strong self-management skills, detail-orientation, and sense of ownership
• Knowledge of Linux fundamentals (eg. CentOS), networking and network protocols, storage technology
• Security and system management best practices
• Very strong scripting and parsing/regex skills, eg. shell, perl, python, etc
• Bias for action and ability to solve problems under pressure
• Extra credit for experience with db management (eg. Postgres), software testing, virtualization, capacity planning

DonorsChoose.org is proud to offer a total compensation package including: a competitive salary with merit-based bonus potential, a comprehensive benefits program including employer paid premiums for medical, dental and vision coverage, as well as transit benefits, non-contributing 401K plan, professional development budget, casual workplace and 5 weeks paid vacation plus national holidays.

DonorsChoose.org engages the public in public schools by giving people a simple, accountable, and personal way to do something about educational inequity. Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on our site. Then, "citizen philanthropists" can support the projects that most inspire them.  To date, more than 230,000 teachers and 6.5 million students from low-income families have received $113 million of books, art supplies, field trips, and other resources. Fast Company recently named DonorsChoose.org the first nonprofit to make the list of the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies, and GOOD magazine highlighted DonorsChoose.org as one of 30 Places We Want to Work. Board members include Stephen Colbert, former Senator Bill Bradley, venture capitalist Fred Wilson, and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

To apply: Email resume, note of introduction, and how you learned about the position to Oliver Hurst-Hiller, CTO & EVP Product at sys-admin (at) donorschoose {dot} org. Include "Systems Engineer" and "REF:SE1" in the subject line. Applications will be accepted unti