Senior IT Systems Engineer

About the Company

The open ocean is Earth’s largest and most power-dense renewable energy resource. Panthalassa is harnessing that resource to generate the cheapest energy on the planet. Our mission is to provide abundant and affordable clean energy for everyone.
Founded in 2016 and based in the Pacific Northwest, our team comes from diverse backgrounds in aerospace, naval architecture, marine operations, hardware, software, and research.

About the Job

We are developing technology that will operate in the worst conditions the world’s oceans have to offer for years at a time without human maintenance or intervention. Building this technology requires collaboration across teams and tools. Our internal computing infrastructure and software applications are fundamental to the operation of our overall business and our technology systems in the field.

You will take shared responsibility for building and operating our internal computing infrastructure platforms and the many business-critical applications that run upon them. The ideal candidate will understand performance, availability, and security requirements for the company’s infrastructure, networks, and applications. You will architect and develop technology solutions to business problems and directly implement and operate them. You should have extensive experience with Windows, MacOS, and Linux systems administration, IP networking, and infrastructure security. You should be able to employ a first-principles, fundamental logic-based approach to problem solving while building highly-secured, performant and reliable systems.

Candidates should have strong interpersonal skills and be able to thrive in a creative, scrappy, and collaborative environment in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis. Our staff have worked at organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Virgin Orbit, Virgin Galactic, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, New Relic, Bridgewater, Raytheon, Disney Imagineering, and the US Army and Air Force, as well as research universities, startups, and small companies across a range of industries. We are organized as a public benefit corporation, and we are backed by leading venture capital firms, private investors, philanthropic investors, and endowments.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and oversee business processes for provisioning, deploying and securing end-user devices and workstations (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS)
• Deploy, operate, monitor, upgrade and migrate business applications to ensure reliable and scalable performance that meets the needs of our users
• Collaboratively architect, build, and operate internal and external-facing computing infrastructure in on-premise datacenter and cloud-hosted environments
• Implement agreed-upon solutions, including deploying new servers, network equipment, applications, end-user devices, and other equipment
• Manage and administer third-party SaaS applications used by the company
• Monitor systems, applications and networks to identify problems and threats
• Respond to incidents when they occur to maintain business continuity and security
• Document system architecture, procedures, and protocols

Required Qualifications:

• Ability to work in our Portland, OR headquarters
• Legal authorization to work in the United States
• 5+ years of directly relevant experience
• Extensive experience with modern Windows, Linux and MacOS system administration using automated tools and processes
• Infrastructure automation with configuration management and IaC tools such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Terraform, etc.
• Experience designing, building, and improving networks, including experience in IPv4, switching, routing, firewalls and high-availability architecture
• Experience with scripting languages such as Bash, Python, PowerShell, etc.
• Experience building on-premise or cloud-hosted Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and virtualized/containerized application hosting platforms
• Ability to rapidly build understanding and expertise in new technologies, software packages, and programming languages
• Ability to think independently about potential solutions – including the novel or uncommon – rather than implementing industry standards if they will not achieve the desired outcome
  

Desired Qualifications:

• 10+ years of directly relevant working and/or research experience
• Comfort working with mission critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities
• Experience supporting software development teams in the practice of building/testing/deploying/operating custom software applications, especially IoT software and hardware
• Experience deploying and maintaining engineering-focused software (e.g. Siemens NX, Ansys, other CAD/CAM/Simulation/FEA software)
• Experience with High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster administration and operation
• Experience with vulnerability management, red-teaming, and other security analysis functions
• Experience at startup companies or with innovative interdisciplinary teams, including: Comfort working with ambiguity and uncertainty; Ability to proactively evolve work to meet the changing needs of company; Willingness to question and refine prior requirements; Strong interpersonal and organizational skills; Open-mindedness about possible solutions, conventional or unconventional; Ability to identify problems, willingness to call them out constructively, and dedication to resolving them
  

The above qualifications are desired, not required. We encourage you to apply if you are a strong candidate with only some of the desired qualifications listed.

Additional Requirements:

• Legal authorization to work in the United States
• Travel to test sites and manufacturing locations as needed
• Intermittently able to work longer hours and weekends to support critical need; we expect a lot of each other, but we also offer a high degree of autonomy and work-life balance, including unlimited PTO and flexible working hours
  

Compensation and Benefits:

If hired for this full-time role, you will receive:

• Cash compensation of $120,000 - $180,000
• Equity in the company. We’re all owners and if we’re successful, this equity should be far and away the most valuable component of your compensation.
• A benefits package that helps you take care of yourself and your family, including:
  • Flexible paid time off
  • Health insurance (the company pays 100% of gold level PPO plan for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Dental insurance (the company pays 33% for full time employees and 100% for their partners and dependents)
  • Vision insurance (the company pays 100% for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Disability insurance (the company pays 100% for a policy to provide long term financial support if you become disabled)
  • Ability to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts, including 401(k), health FSA, and dependent care FSA
• Relocation assistance to facilitate your move to Portland (if needed).

Location:

This is an on-site position with flexibility for remote working. Our offices, lab, and shop are located in Portland, Oregon.