Join our small but mighty Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team on a critical, high-impact 6-month contract. We are seeking an exceptional Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in Linux systems and OS packaging to spearhead a vital fleet-wide upgrade. This is a chance to make a lasting architectural contribution, ensuring the stability and performance of our core platform for years to come.

You will be embedded within a focused team responsible for the core health, scalability, and performance of our production environment. We value deep technical ownership, collaborative problem-solving, and continuous improvement. While your daily focus will be on execution, you will interact closely with various adjoining platform teams, including other highly senior engineers, making this role a fantastic opportunity to collaborate across the engineering organization.

About The Role

This 6-month contract role is a hands-on technical position focused on the complete lifecycle of our critical operating system upgrade. Your primary mission will be to ensure a seamless transition of our vast fleet of Virtual Machines from the current OS to the latest LTS release.

Role Responsibilities:

OS Package Development: Rapidly port, update, and package existing in-house and third-party software for compatibility with the newer Ubuntu operating system.
Packages include: PHP, PHP libraries/extensions, proprietary Golang applications, and self-hosted versions of tools like Apache2, cURL, Prometheus exporters, and various others.
Testing & Quality Assurance: Design and execute thorough functional and foundational compatibility tests to ensure the stability and completeness of all new OS packages before deployment.
Troubleshooting & Debugging: Proactively diagnose and resolve complex packaging, build, and integration issues, helping to minimize or eliminate downtime during the migration process. Ability to dig into systemd startup failures and co-located service dependencies will also be useful.
CI/CD Interaction: Modify existing CI/CD configurations (build and release pipelines) as necessary to successfully build, test, and release the new OS packages without disrupting the current production environment.
Collaboration: Work effectively with the SRE team and neighboring platform teams to integrate configuration management changes and resolve any inter-team dependencies.

Requirements

We are seeking a candidate who can hit the ground running, bringing a depth of experience that reflects true seniority in Linux systems engineering.

Must-Haves:

Senior-Level Linux Expertise: Minimum 7+ years of experience working with and deeply understanding Linux operating systems, preferably Ubuntu or Debian.
Deep OS Packaging Mastery: Demonstrated, hands-on experience in creating, maintaining, and troubleshooting complex OS packages (e.g., .deb, .rpm) for modern Linux distributions.
Polyglot Packaging Experience: Proven track record packaging software across multiple languages/ecosystems, including PHP (libraries/extensions) and Golang applications.
CI/CD Fluency: Strong working knowledge of CI/CD concepts and the ability to modify existing pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Buildkite) for package build, test, and release processes.
Advanced Troubleshooting: Exceptional debugging and root-cause analysis skills for complex, system-level issues arising from OS, library, or package incompatibilities.

Nice-to-Haves:

Configuration Management Experience: Prior hands-on experience with Chef or a similar configuration management system (e.g., Puppet, Ansible).
Experience with monitoring and observability tools, particularly those like Prometheus and Grafana, and packaging their exporters.
The interview process for this role will be 30-min manager screen, followed by a 30-60 min technical assessment (e.g. live coding session, technical deep dive, case study, or short form video editing assessment) with 1-2 members of the hiring team.