Senior IT System Administrator

at  Terma AS

For our office in Darmstadt, Germany, we are seeking for a Senior IT System Administrator with wide technical knowledge on design and operation of IT core services. The main activities involve virtualization and infrastructure technologies, VMware, GNU/Linux and IBM AIX.
As a member of our Terma IT team, you will provide support to our internal and external customers, international organizations within the space sector. The ultimate target of this role is to ensure the IT platform supporting the earth observation satellites and spacecraft operations activities is running smoothly.
The duties range from the support to the internal and external operational environments and facilities, to the analysis, design, development, testing and maintenance of new mission critical ground segment facilities.
Future activities, after you acquire enough domain knowledge, will bring you other responsibilities that might grow into technical leadership and service management.

DESIRED SKILLS:

• Knowledge in all engineering lifecycle activities (e.g. requirements definition, design, development, integration, verification, and validation)
• Hands-on experience in automating the deployment of virtual infrastructure (e.g. virtual machines) and their configuration
• Experience in integrating CI-CD pipelines with corporate tools (e.g. Serena Dimensions, JIRA and Confluence)
• Familiarity with AI/ML with practical implementation of algorithms and ML environments will be advantageous
  Fluency in English (spoken and written) is mandatory, as English is the working language. This is a hybrid position where you will be working up to 3 days/week at home and the rest at Terma’s location in Darmstadt (a city of 160K population, 30km south of Frankfurt am Main) Germany.
  The variety of the tasks and the scope of the systems to be supported require a high degree of autonomy and good analytical skills together with the ability to effectively cooperate within the team.

You shall have a university degree in computer science (or equivalent) together with proven extensive knowledge and work experience with the following:

• IBM AIX or GNU/Linux operating system(s);
• Virtualization technologies (VMware, NSX, PowerVC);
• Cloud infrastructure (Openstack, Docker, Kubernetes);
• Automation (ansible) and monitoring (CheckMK, Nagios);
• Operation and production environments;
• Understanding of network and storage infrastructure

Proven knowledge and at least 7 years hands-on experience with at least 3 of the following is mandatory:

• GNU\Linux administration using different distributions (SLES, RHEL);
• IBM AIX administration and troubleshooting;
• Big scale VMware infrastructures;
• Core services management (DNS/LDAP/DHCP/infrastructure);
• (2 years) OpenStack or Docker/Kubernetes infrastructure

Proven knowledge and hands-on experience with the following is mandatory:

• Definition, implementation, testing and documentation of end-to-end system changes;
• Preparation of technical documentation in English in a complete and clear manner;
• Communication and interpersonal skills, being able to effectively communicate and coordinate activities within different teams;
• Team mentoring and technical guidance

Your tasks will typically include but are not limited to:

• Act as Single Point of Contact for incidents and anomalies for Eumetsat’s Operational systems via Ticketing system.
• Installation and configuration of operating system and other software, tuning of operating systems parameters to optimize performance.
• Analysis, planning, and performance tuning of Hardware (HW) and Software (SW) installations, ensuring compatibility between subsystems.
• Monitoring of the system performance, investigation of HW and system SW problems and performance of the relevant corrective actions.
• Ensuring that in case of HW or system SW failures the operational configuration can be restored, including the definition, maintenance, performance of backup procedures.
• Liaise with the external providers of HW and system SW maintenance for the request and follow up of maintenance interventions.
• Perform administration and installation of databases.
• Administration of user accounts, disk quotas and technical user support.
• Support to SW development and maintenance on system related matters implementation and maintenance of scripts and/or procedures where applicable for the automated and/or controlled execution of the above activities, generation, or update of technical documentation in relation to system upgrades.
• Provide cloud systems administration and maintenance (take over routine operations, monitoring, troubleshooting, patching, and upgrading, etc.).
• Design, maintain and improve infrastructure automation strategies.
• Provide end user cloud support (e.g. guidance for best infrastructure utilization, review and improve use cases, troubleshoot problems, and provide ad-hoc training and expertise).
• Develop, enhance, and maintain IaC (Infrastructure as Code) scripts and configurations (e.g., Terraform, Ansible) to automate infrastructure provisioning and management.

For day to day activities you shall apply the relevant change control and maintenance procedures. The complex environment requires a wide background of technical knowledge therefore your natural curiosity will help you to resolve complicated situations.
This is a full time position, located at our office in Darmstadt, Germany, starting ASAP. Standby / call-out support and provision of support to critical operations, may sometimes be required.
Your Profile:
The ideal candidates have an academic degree in IT, Computer Science or equivalent and possess the following skills:

You shall have a university degree in computer science (or equivalent) together with proven extensive knowledge and work experience with the following:

• IBM AIX or GNU/Linux operating system(s);
• Virtualization technologies (VMware, NSX, PowerVC);
• Cloud infrastructure (Openstack, Docker, Kubernetes);
• Automation (ansible) and monitoring (CheckMK, Nagios);
• Operation and production environments;
• Understanding of network and storage infrastructure.

Proven knowledge and at least 7 years hands-on experience with at least 3 of the following is mandatory:

• GNU\Linux administration using different distributions (SLES, RHEL);
• IBM AIX administration and troubleshooting;
• Big scale VMware infrastructures;
• Core services management (DNS/LDAP/DHCP/infrastructure);
• (2 years) OpenStack or Docker/Kubernetes infrastructure.

Proven knowledge and hands-on experience with the following is mandatory:

• Definition, implementation, testing and documentation of end-to-end system changes;
• Preparation of technical documentation in English in a complete and clear manner;
• Communication and interpersonal skills, being able to effectively communicate and coordinate activities within different teams;
• Team mentoring and technical guidance.

Fluency in English (spoken and written) is mandatory, as English is the working language.
The variety of the tasks and the scope of the systems to be supported require a high degree of autonomy and good analytical skills together with the ability to effectively cooperate within the team.