gainful.io

Job Description

Hi, I'm Ajay, and I'm tired.
 
For the past seven years, I've been managing 75 servers across AWS, a dozen more at various other providers, trying to keep my users' emails out of Spam, studying SPF and DMARC records, fighting with my overloaded IIS servers, tuning ridiculously complex SQL queries, figuring out how to stop my 5 TB database from growing so fast, all the while building new features and fixing bugs for my SaaS platform.
 
I run GMass, a popular email automation platform. We've grown every single year and we're finally at the point where I want to offload the management of our systems onto someone else.
 
Want to ease my pain?
 
First, let me tell you about the tech environment GMass is built on. 90% of our infrastructure is hosted at AWS, and 10% is hosted across several more traditional hosting companies. In total, there are about 85 servers, including lots of IIS web servers, a couple SQL Servers, one MySQL server, and a bunch of SMTP servers. Most of our backend code is in C#/.NET Standard, but our front-end, which is a Chrome extension, is JavaScript.
 
The overarching goals of this position is to make sure GMass is always up and running and emails are getting delivered in a timely manner.
 
Issues we encounter on a regular basis: 

•  Our senders are overwhelmed and sending too slowly. Need to fire up some more servers. 
•  A domain or IP has been blacklisted. Need to figure out a workaround. 
•  An IIS server isn't responding fast enough. Diagnose. 
•  A disk on a critical server is about to fill up. 
•  An abuser has penetrated our network and needs to be stopped. 
•  We've received an abuse complaint from an upstream provider, and we have 24 hours to respond. 

 
Technical skills that you should have: 

•  You have a deep understanding of how email is sent 
•  You know how to manage an IIS server 
•  You know how to query databases. You don't need to be a full fledged DBA, but the more you know, the better. 
•  You understand email deliverability and factors that impact it. 
•  You have a thorough understanding of the DNS system. 
•  You're already familiar with AWS. 

There's an element of email deliverability to this role. You should be well versed in these protocols: 

•  SPF 
•  DKIM 
•  DMARC 
•  SMTP 

 
Bonus points if you've worked with transactional email services like SendGrid, Mailgun, Mandrill, and Amazon SES.
 
DevOps?
 
You'll notice that this is a "sysadmin" role rather than a DevOps role. While there are elements of engineering and development that will make this role easier, it still falls better within the scope of a sysadmin role.
 
More about me:
I created GMass seven years ago, and I love the system, company, and user base. I believe GMass has a shot at becoming a tech household name. I live in Dayton, Ohio with my wife and kids. I work a lot, because I love my work. You can find me on Twitter at @PartTimeSnob. I'm on LinkedIn too but not as active there as on Twitter:  https://gainful.io/jobs/Cefr9gIHBjU/l/2

Ready to rescue me?
I prefer you send me an email directly to ajay AT wordzen DOT com, and tell me about yourself and how you fit with this role. The subject line can be whatever you like, but please include the word "sysadmin" in it so I don't miss your email. My policy is that if you put effort into your email to me, you'll get a response from me.