We Need a Data Center Facilities Manager!

The Backblaze Data Center team is responsible for Backblaze’s cloud infrastructure. This is the team that defines our data center requirements and finds and/or builds facilities that meet our needs. This team is also responsible for daily operations and capacity planning including managing vendors, equipment, power and security. They focus on smart growth with an emphasis on automation, data-driven decision making, cost-effective design, and environmental sustainability.

Backblaze is growing quickly and looking to expand its Data Center team with the addition of two superstars.

Data Center Facilities Manager

The Data Center Facilities Manager will lead the effort to expand our physical infrastructure and help maintain existing facilities.

Responsibilities:

• Lead global search for the next Backblaze data center, considering options from colo to build our own.
• Negotiate and manage Backblaze’s data center contracts and ramp schedules.
• Manage buildout of new data center floorspace, including the installation of racks, cabling, and power infrastructure.
• Ensure monitoring coverage of power and environmental metrics (temperature, humidity, etc.).
• Help select & qualify new hardware (power infrastructure, cabling solutions, racks, HVAC, etc.).
• Receive deliveries & maintain accurate inventory counts/records for data center assets.
• Repair and troubleshoot defective equipment.
• Follow and improve data center best practices and documentation.
• Maintain strong physical security (including PCI compliance, access controls, etc.).
• On-call responsibilities include 24×7 trips to data center to resolve issues that can’t be handled remotely.
• Help train new data center technicians.

Requirements:

• 7+ years managing mission-critical 24x7x365 data center environments.
• Expert knowledge of power & mechanical infrastructures (e.g. UPS, PDU, ATS, Generator, AHU, chillers, pumps, CRAC, etc.).
• Working knowledge of physical IT infrastructures (e.g. Servers, SANs, Networking, etc.).
• Excellent business acumen and financial management experience.
• Willingness to travel as needed during data center search.
• Ability to spending a year in the location selected for our new data center to facilitate buildout.
• Bachelor’s of science or bachelor’s of arts in electrical/mechanical engineering, computer science, math, telecommunications, or equivalent experience preferred.
• Ability to lift/move 50-75 lbs and work down near the floor as needed.
• Position based near Sacramento, California and may require periodic visits to the corporate office in San Mateo.

Senior Automation Engineer

The Senior Automation Engineer will lead our effort to streamline provisioning and reconfiguration of systems in the environment.

Responsibilities:

• Lead effort to automate provisioning & updating of systems with Ansible, custom script, and other tools.
• Maintain and expand utility script library.
• Understand environment thoroughly enough to administer/debug any system in data center.
• Collaborate on capacity planning (manage storage buffers, forecast Pod needs per month, ensure adequate colo space, etc.).
• Collaborate on strategic planning (optimize performance, reduce cost, increase efficiency, mitigate risk).
• Collaborate on network security (including PCI compliance, firewalls, ACLs, HackerOne, Log Analysis, etc.).
• Collaborate on design/deploy/administer network infrastructure (switches, VPNs, routers, etc.).
• Help manage projects and work with teams to ensure routine tasks are covered.
• Help manage infrastructure services installation/configuration (DNS, DHCP, NTP, Certificate Authority, Clonezilla, PXE, etc.).
• Help manage web services installation/configuration (Tomcat, Apache, Ngnix, WordPress, Java, etc.).
• Help administer database servers (MySQL).
• Help debug/repair software problems (File system, RAID & boot drive repairs).
• Participate in the 24×7 on-call pager rotation and respond to alerts as needed.

Requirements:

• Expert knowledge of Linux system administration; Debian experience preferred.
• Experience running Apache, Tomcat, WordPress, and Java services.
• 8+ years of experience or equivalent.
• Bash scripting skills.
• Position based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California requiring 3+ days/week in San Mateo, CA.

All positions require:

• Good attitude and willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
• Strong desire to work for a small, fast-paced company.
• Desire to learn and adapt to rapidly changing technologies and work environment.
• Rigorous adherence to best practices.
• Relentless attention to detail.
• Excellent troubleshooting and problem solving skills.
• Excellent communication, time management, problem-solving, and organizational skills.

Interested?

Check out these videos on our Data Center Operations team:

Want to join our team? Follow these three steps:

• 1. Send an email to jobscontact@backblaze.com with one of the positions listed above in the subject line.
• 2. Include your resume.
• 3. Include your answers to two of the following three questions:
  1. • What about working at Backblaze excites you the most?
     • Provide three adjectives that best describe your personal workspace.
     • How would you manage multiple facilities to 1,000+ servers each?