System Administrator

About Us

Discourse is a global company with a product that is 100% open source. Our team is 100 people and growing. We’re transforming the online community space. Our product powers a substantial segment of successful online communities, with >30,000 Discourse instances globally. We have thousands of paying customers, with a growing number of Fortune 500 companies on our list, alongside many leading players in the fast-growth technology, gaming and AI spaces.

Applicants in other timezones will not be considered (even if they are willing to adjust their working hours, we don’t think it’s healthy).

About the job

System Administrators at Discourse are computing system generalists. This role will see you debugging across all layers of our tech stack, with a particular focus on the foundational network, storage, and systems management layers that support production Discourse deployments. Our System Administrators are responsible for ongoing capacity planning, platform reliability and security improvements, and compliance. Advances are often achieved through the design and implementation of new software tools and services.

Discourse is primarily a hosting company. Robust infrastructure is a core competency for us. Most deployments are served from our own bare metal, with AWS and other cloud services used as necessary.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Applying fundamental computing theory to solve problems in sustainable space and time.

• When reasoning about infrastructure improvements, you draw upon these combined skills to choose or build the right tool for the job.

• Engaging vendors and datacenter personnel to purchase, deploy, and manage hardware.

We’re looking for someone who:

• Has a well-rounded understanding of how applications interface with the operating system, how the operating system interfaces with the network.

• Can read C, and feel at home in Unix-like systems.

• Has fluency in at least one high-level programming language. We have a large amount of infrastructure tooling, primarily in Ruby and Go.

• Has experience with at least some of tools the we use: Docker, Puppet, Terraform, Prometheus, ELK.

At Discourse, the ability to communicate well in writing is paramount. We use our own software, Discourse, for most communication and most of your interaction with customers and team members will be in writing. In order to live these values, we look for folks who are:

• Detail-oriented, proactive, and organized

• Able to make decisions quickly and communicate effectively

• Work well independently and remotely

• Kind to their co-workers

• Highly driven with an execution focus and a strong belief in our mission to make the internet a better place

About our pay & benefits

We believe that high-quality benefits make our team more effective. We’ve been thoughtful about our benefits package which includes a completely flexible schedule, 5 weeks of vacation per year, funding for a co-working stipend, and much more!

Our Salary Framework is location and experience based and we’re happy to provide a range up front. We also give every employee a stake in the success of the business, regardless of seniority or role. All full-time employees are eligible to receive equity options in the company as part of our equity incentive program.

Lastly, we believe in having a welcoming workplace where people with diverse backgrounds and cultures can create something great together. We encourage you to apply, even if you don’t meet every qualification! Apply by sending an intro to who you are and resume to jobs@discourse.org.