Cloud Systems Administrator - (AWS)

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One of our clients are searching for an experienced Cloud Systems Administrator with solid AWS experience to join them on a permanent basis in Croydon.

The Senior Cloud Systems Administrator role is responsible for managing the client's public cloud systems on AWS, working closely and collaboratively with our web developers to develop and maintain deployment, monitor, tune, report, secure and the life-cycle management solutions for our hosted environments.

Our DevOps team builds and maintains our next generation micro service API's, WordPress management plugins, performance monitoring platform and systems automation tools around Amazon Web Services, therefore, the successful candidate must have a minimum of 3 years' experience maintaining large AWS based SaaS solutions to be considered for this position.

Key Accountabilities: 

Daily administration and support of the client's various hosting and infrastructure environments

Deploying, automating, maintaining and managing AWS cloud-based production systems, to ensure the availability, performance, scalability and security of these systems.

Managing EC2 lunch configurations and autoscaling groups using a broad range of AWS technologies

Continuous improvement for technology and processes for our SaaS environments

Performing backup operations, ensuring all required file systems and system data are successfully backed up to the appropriate media or location.

Auditing data backups for accuracy, testing restore capabilities, have the responsibility for customer data redundancy.

Configure and fine tune cloud infrastructure systems

Install and configure virtual cloud instances

Implementing infrastructure enhancements to improve the reliability and performance of systems

Conducting routine audits of infrastructure to ensure compliance with established standards, policies, configuration and security guidelines

React to, act on, and manage incoming requests and monitoring alarms, prioritising according to business needs

Support daily server and network operations including server patching, upgrades, and deployments

Ensuring long-term requirements of systems operations and administration are identified and submitted for considerations to IT senior managers.

Experience: 

Support and maintain the service infrastructure with appropriate security and privacy controls and meets users' needs

Provide documentation and training materials to ensure knowledge retention

Provide advice and assurance about the work of junior colleagues.

Deliver new functionality to service platforms, with an emphasis on platform independence, automation and cost-benefit optimisation

Ensure that governance rules, particularly security standards are always upheld.

Ensure maximum uptime / availability of the AWS environment.

Monitors and communicates system performance metrics and works with internal staff and 3rd party vendors to resolve any issues.

Qualifications and Experience

Necessary education/qualifications:

3-5 years' experience with using a broad range of AWS technologies to develop and maintain an AWS based cloud solution, with an emphasis on best practice cloud security.

3-5 years' experience administering both Linux and Microsoft cloud-based environments and respective hosted application(s) is an advantage

AWS Certification, such as AWS Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator or DevOps Engineer, is a major asset

3-5 years' experience with fundamental internet protocols such as DNS, HTTP(S) TCP/IP networks, routers, firewalls DNS, DHCP and Load Balancing

Solid experience as a DevOps Engineer in a 24x7 uptime Amazon AWS environment, including automation experience with configuration management tools.

Experience working with common DevOps tools, such as, Consul, Splunk and Ansible

Experience in Build and Code Deployment functions via Jenkins and Gitlab

Solid experience in Database Administration and strong understanding of Cloud native DBs (AWS Aurora, DynamoDB, etc).

Experience with system health monitoring and optimising performance.

Experience with threat modelling, especially for web application and web APIs

Ability to analyse and resolve complex infrastructure resource and application deployment issues.

Knowledge of software containerisation platforms like Docker and container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm.

Experience installing, configuring, architecting, and managing website CMS's for high availability using varnish caching in both a Windows and Linux environment

Desired Skills (Not essential but beneficial to have):

Experience scripting or developing in at least one of the following languages: Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, .NET etc

Experience with Agile software development, project management methodologies and tools.

Experience supporting the Content Management Systems for example: WordPress

Experience administrating version control systems such as SVN and GIT.

Skills & Competencies: 

Interpersonal Skills:

Strong influencing skills with the ability to influence and negotiate for time and resources at all levels.

Evidence of success in building and managing relationships with high level stakeholders.

Organisational awareness with the ability to operate with confidence and credibility across all functions of the Company.

IT, Administrative and Organisational Skills:

Experience with security controls i.e. VPNs, encryption & key/certificate management, endpoint protection, virtual firewalls/ACLs/NSGs, setting up bastion nodes, etc

Experience connecting cloud infrastructure to on-prem networks (VPNs, tunnelling, AD connectors, routing)

Experience in architecture/engineering of cloud-based distribution systems

Background in Distributed Systems, Databases, Security, Networking & Load Balancing, Monitoring, Scripting & Automation

Excellent planning, organisational and time management skills, with the ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines and to demonstrate an effective and resourceful approach to addressing issues.

Judgement and Analysis:

Sound judgement with the ability to interpret, analyse and disseminate complex, technical information.

Must be able to make excellent strategic decisions for the design and build of services to AWS, evaluating the likely impact of alternative approaches, referring to software requirements, input from the Development leads and the existing source code base. Decision making in this role will have an impact on service availability, security, speed, team productivity and customer support. Therefore, personal judgement needs to be exercised in determining a course of action.

Initiative:

Resourceful and purposeful, with initiative, drive and a strong desire to deliver exceptional results.

Able to work autonomously through a wide variety of complex problems under own initiative, adopting system administration principles of networking & system administration required for robust, secure and scalable solutions.

A team player both internally and externally.

Communication skills:

Able to write technical software design specifications.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical terminology to non-technical people.

Ensure configuration changes are well documented to assist in future maintenance.