Director of SysOps

There is a good chance you have already met us, and you didn't even know it! Have you ever been to a theme park and had your picture taken? Then there is a high probability we, Magic Memories took it! We are undoubtedly a technology leader in the tourism industry working with countless partners around the world, offering them a complete end-to-end capture solution. From light entering a camera– to pixels being downloaded– to ink touching paper, we do it all at Magic Memories while making our customers smile!

Contrary to what you would think, there is quite a bit of software and infrastructure powering our venues. Whether it is as simple as using EC2, AWS/Azure/GCE, Kubernetes, Lambda, On-premise hardware, k3s or Microk8s at the edge, multi-cloud, or even IoT, there is a good chance we will either be using it, should be using it, or are already using it. We expect that you will be the person to help us figure out what needs to be added and/or removed from our stack.

As Director of SysOps you will report directly to the Head of Engineering. Your chief responsibility will be to continue mapping out and owning the infrastructure responsible for supporting our software. You'll need to possess good communication and interpersonal skills, as you are responsible for coordinating the efforts of many team members who are working on products and projects. You must be highly organized in order to oversee projects from idea conception, to development and implementation. It's likely you'll have to make many decisions throughout this process, so you should have the ability to see the big picture while also being detail-oriented.

Core responsibilities

• Managing and appropriately escalates delivery impediments, risks, issues, and changes associated to the product development initiatives
• Assigning and monitoring work of team, ensuring that application development and deployment is done in the best possible way, and implements quality control and review systems throughout the development and deployment processes
• Displaying technical leadership and oversight of implementation and deployment planning, system integration, ongoing data validation processes, quality assurance, delivery, operations, and sustainability of technical solutions
• Evaluating technological choices (network/hardware related and technology/code related) by querying providers and providing evaluations of each solution include ROI evaluations in the present and future implications, limitations, and opportunities
• Possessing excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to interact professionally with a diverse group of developers, product owners, and subject matter experts
• Exercising broadly delegated authority for planning, directing, coordinating, administering, and executing both routine and complex technical elements of technical operations
• Managing analysis and approval of new code through security and performance gates that you will design and develop for feature-complete software.
• Being an advocate for security and performance standards in the organization
• Managing operational aspect of production and development servers including developing, training in, and validating compliance with procedures and checklists related to disk space usage, monitoring solutions, deployment, conventions, access to the production and development sources, source control access and usage, performance monitoring, code modifications validation, scheduling, and more
• Working within IT, cross-functionally and with vendors, in order to successfully identify, prioritize, and resolve issues and provide subject matter expertise for enhancements, developments, and operational improvements to the website applications that Magic Memories relies on
• Identifying trending gaps or issues in day-to-day performance of all website applications and components hosted by Magic Memories and third party vendors including by active monitoring, alert management, reporting, and process reviews
• Maintaining issue tracking and documentation systems and provides reporting that ensures proper tracking and visibility of issues and projects
• Identifies technical and process improvement opportunities and socialize/advocate to get them implemented
• Working closely with the Director Engineering in release planning, preparation, validation, postrelease monitoring, and ongoing monitoring.
• Maintaining accurate program estimates, timelines, project plans, and status reports
• Possessing expert technical understanding of the intersection of development and operations (DevOps), monitoring and management tools, and deployment processes and tools
• Possessing high level understanding in the areas of web application programming, content management systems, API, databases, and system design
• Providing process improvement recommendations based on best practices and industry standards
• Resolving conflicts by demonstrating leadership and appropriate decision-making competencies
• Dealing with complex technical management coordination with multiple vendors and staff Is responsible for the development of standards and processes for operations that proactively prevent problems from occurring

Who we are (current team):

• We are a small team of 3 in a global enterprise seeking to add one more to our lean team
• We oversee all cloud infrastructure operations around the globe.
• We build the things that don't come off the shelf.

• We use pull-requests to ensure quality across the team.
• We are distributed across many time zones but have meetings that are primarily concentrated between 19:00 UTC+0 to 01:00 UTC+0
• We are human. We are diverse. We are accommodating.

Qualifications:

• 1 - 2+ years of SysOps/DevOps Manager or related experience with gradually increasing responsibilities and a demonstrated understanding of DevOps and technical quality control processes, artifacts and tools
• Technical Skills:
• Languages – Python, Bash, Powershell, Ruby, Java and Golang
• DevOps tools – Puppet, Terraform, Helm, Helmfile & Docker Compose, Jenkins (CI/ CD), Github Actions, Kubernetes, Lensapp
• Middleware technologies – Graylog, RabbitMQ, SQS, SNS, Redis
• Monitoring - Prometheus, InfluxDB, Grafana
• IT - Google Workspace, LastPass, Office 365, Active Directory, Azure AD
• Clouds - AWS & Azure
• Database Technologies - Graylog, Neptune, Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB, Redshift
• Nice to haves:
• Sagemaker
• Serverless
• Kinesis
• Kafka
• Neo4j, Cosmos DB
• Micro K8s, k3s, IoT and/or edge deployment of Kubernetes
• A track record as a coach, mentor, and developer of talent
• An ability to drive to big picture goals and milestones while valuing and maintaining a strong attention to detail
• An ability to quickly identify and drive to the optimal solution when presented with a series of constraints
• Demonstrated ability in people management, strategic planning, risk management, change management, and project management
• Excellent judgment, analytical thinking, and problem-solving skills
• Experience working with quality management approaches, techniques, and principles
• Full understanding of software development lifecycle best practices
• Self-motivated individual that possesses excellent time management and organizational skills
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, relationship building skills, and ability to achieve results without direct reporting relationships
• Strong sense of personal responsibility and accountability for delivering high quality work, both personally and at a team level