Senior SRE Job Description

We’re looking for a site reliability engineer who can help the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s sysadmin team manage the growth in the demand for its services.

Keeping core technical infrastructure which the OpenStreetMap project relies on running is one of the key responsibilities outlined in the foundation’s mission statement https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement. So far, volunteers have admirably filled this role. However, the growth of the project is increasing the demands on our infrastructure.

The person will work full time, closely with the current team of volunteer sysadmins, and with one board member who will communicate what tasks we would like to have completed.

If possible, OSM would greatly benefit from one of our current volunteers being able to spend more time on maintaining and improving our services. We will explore this possibility before soliciting offers from a broader range of candidates.

Scope of work

  • Duties: Responsible for maintaining and evolving the operational infrastructure and hosting for the OpenStreetMap Project. Ensure resilient, stable, and secure infrastructure through continuous evaluation, management, installation, configuration, maintenance, disaster recovery planning and improvement. Respond to outages, abuse, and other pressing issues.
  • Plan: Forecast and plan for the future. Helping the Board establish long-term infrastructure plans.
  • Supporting, mentoring and enabling volunteers and eventual future coworkers. Create space for volunteers from OWG and the general community to contribute productively
  • Communicate: Respond to and communicate with users, OWG and other working groups and projects. Work in the open by default. Communicate platform issues and updates clearly, and enforce policies. Interaction with the OpenStreetMap developer community, responding to their tickets and other enquiries.
  • External relations: Ensure good relationships and terms with providers and partners
  • Implementing usage policies to support the resilience of the infrastructure and community
  • Coordinating projects with the Board and the OSM community

Profile

We want the person providing the services to be great communicator, with an excellent command of written and spoken English, and willing and able to collaborate online.

They should be a creative and inventive problem-solver.

Being involved in OpenStreetMap as a contributor, or experience with other Open Source or Open Data or volunteer communities, will be helpful to understand how our community works.

The sysadmin team and board are volunteers who have full-time jobs outside OpenStreetMap. While we don’t expect the person to hit the ground running, the volunteers won’t be able to communicate with the person all the time or help with everything. They should be able to self-organise and to enjoy finding out about things themselves.

Employment/contracting structure

Location: 100% Remote within UK

The person will work from their premises, and most of the time determine their schedule.

The OSMF is incorporated in England, deals frequently with UK entities, and has most of its servers in Dublin, York, London and Amsterdam. A base where travel to these places is easy is required. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a global organisation; working with people in different time zones and handling related scheduling constraints is expected.

Select a repo