Junior Systems Engineer in Harrow

Open Answers is a provider of premium quality digital technology services to blue chip customers and the public sector, specialising in cloud systems integration. Customers include British Airways, Allwyn (The National Lottery) and Channel 4 Television. We are passionate about creating business value through doing innovative and interesting things with technology. Our software powers business critical systems in areas as diverse as lottery ticket sales, TV broadcast and care industry regulation, to name but a few.

Within our small but successful company you will have the opportunity to make the most of and enhance your skills, working as part of a great team. Open Answers provides a happy, respectful and collaborative working environment and we give our employees the freedom to find innovative solutions for themselves. Working conditions are informal and un-corporate, there’s no dress code (unless meeting a customer!).

The Junior Systems Engineer Role:

We are looking for a bright DevOps-minded junior systems engineer with development experience to join us in supporting and developing infrastructure solutions for our customers. The role will touch on all aspects of Linux systems engineering, supporting, building and maintaining the infrastructure, applications and tools that we and our customers depend on. This is an ideal opportunity for a graduate with some relevant industry experience who wants to progress to the next level, immerse themselves in technology, working with and learning from some exceptional peers. Your responsibilities and rewards will grow with your experience.

Technology-wise you will have the chance to receive exposure to all levels of the applications and infrastructure stack. We develop applications in many different languages and open frameworks, deploying and supporting them on our own kit, public and private cloud or on customer premises. Recognised as Integration experts we are an active part of the 'API Explosion', helping our customers gain business advantage through integration in the Cloud and leveraging AI.

To be a successful candidate:

• You are a self-starter, quick to learn and have a passion for delivering to exceed expectations.
• You have a desire to pick up new skills and share your knowledge.
• You fill the gaps in your knowledge by asking the right questions.
• You are interested in automation and building infrastructure as code, perhaps with experience of Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, or Ansible.
• You have an interest in or experience of monitoring tools, for example zabbix or grafana.
• You are confident writing programs and command line scripts. You may have published some of your projects on places like GitHub.
• You have a degree (or equivalent) in an IT related subject.

Main Responsibilities of the Junior Systems Engineer:

• Provide excellent technical support.
• Plan, document and communicate technical changes, taking into account risk and ensuring best practices for operational tasks.
• Perform proactive monitoring, and respond to alerts.
• Troubleshoot, document and communicate solutions to technical problems.
• Participate in on-call rota.
• Build good working relationships with our customers.

Knowledge and Experience of the Ideal Candidate:

• Confident with Linux command shell or Windows Powershell.
• Ability to program confidently in at least one scripted language from the following: Python, Perl, PHP, JavaScript.
• Basic familiarity of a traditional SQL database.
• Experience of UNIX or Windows OS at administration level.
• Ability to explain basic TCP/IP networking and troubleshooting concepts.
• You have created a website backed by a database, probably using a CMS.
• Familiarity with source code control systems such as Git and Subversion.

Experience that would be Advantageous:

• Experience of configuration automation.
• Ability to program in at least one compiled language: C, C++, Java, .NET family.
• Windows administration and troubleshooting.
• Understanding of XML, SOAP and RESTful API concepts.
• Cloud experience eg AWS EC2, Azure, Google, Oracle.
• Working with a continuous build environment such as Jenkins.
• Contributing to your own open-source project.
• iOS or Android app development.

Core Personal and Interpersonal Skills:

• You are a self-starter with the tenacity to follow incidents through to root cause and not stop at blockers.
• You have a service related focus with the ability to empathise with the customer.
• You possess organisational skills to ensure documented evidence for Incident and Change is completed.
• You have an analytical approach to problem solving.
• You are a committed, reliable and flexible team-worker.
• You share knowledge and help your colleagues.

Why Open Answers?

• Work with brilliant engineers who love what they do.
• Real responsibility from day one with support when you need it.
• A friendly, informal environment that values creativity and autonomy.
• Hands on with a broad and exciting tech stack.
• Opportunities to grow your skills, experience and career fast.
• Hybrid role, 37.5 hour week, 20 days holiday (plus statutory), Pension.

Whats Next?

If you have the enthusiasm and skillset to hit the ground running in this new role, we would love to hear from you. APPLY NOW for immediate consideration.