Blackboard jobs - Sr Systems Operations Specialist

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a Senior Systems Operations Specialist to help us push the boundaries of what education can offer through the power of technology. Education is our passion, and our team members bring that to work each day as they aim to advance learning in every region of the world. Blackboard is the world's leading education technology company, providing dynamic products and services to the global education community. We’re focused on driving innovation in EdTech and working with our clients to create a smarter learning environment.

For more information about Blackboard Inc. and our career opportunities, please visit .

We are seeking an experienced, motivated, and detail-oriented Senior Systems Operations Specialist to join our Web Technologies team.  Our team is responsible for delivering over three thousand high performance and highly available Web applications to our clients by troubleshooting, tuning, and configuring their entire technology stack including Apache web server, Tomcat application server, Linux operating system, and Oracle/Postgres database server in a traditional hosting and cloud environment.

Position Responsibilities Will Include

As a Senior Systems Operations Specialist, you will play an integral role in the success of the group.

• Conducting root cause analysis for the poor performance and the instability of web application systems that are escalated from Tier 1 NOC and Tier 2 Support team
• Developing and documenting processes, methods, procedures, and tools for diagnosing and fixing known bugs & problems and for performing common tasks
• Analyzing changes in each new application version release, hot fix, or service pack of the application and updating the existing documents, processes, methods, procedures, and tools to work with these changes
• Documenting and escalating application bugs with detailed analysis to the Product Development department
• Collaborating with other teams on efforts to improve application performance, stability, and availability
• Installing, setting-up, and configuring third party tools for collecting and analyzing data on application performance and stability
• Participating in the weekly on-call rotation with the other team members to resolve critical production application issues that are escalated from the Monitoring team after hours and on weekends
• Helping junior team members analyze and solve complex problems.
• Writing standard operating procedures and conducting training sessions for junior team members and members of other teams such as Ops, CHM, and Tier 2 support
• Working under pressure and quickly prioritizing issues and requests; personally resolving issues to deliver solution per accelerated timeframe, as well as escalating for assistance as appropriate 
  

The Candidate

Required skills/qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in installing, configuring, troubleshooting, and tuning Java applications, Apache web server, Tomcat or Weblogic application servers, and Linux operating systems in a large 24x7 production environment
• Experience with analyzing Java/JVM performance, using tools such as thread and heap dumps with a strong understanding of JVM memory structure and garbage collection concepts
• 7+ years of experience in Unix or Linux systems administration and highly skilled in using its common tools and utilities such as top, sar, vmstat, iostat, and netstat
• Experience in Shell, Perl, Python, or similar scripting languages to automate common tasks
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills
• Good interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills
• Team player
• Attention to detail and a commitment to quality work
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related area of study, or equivalent experience
• Ability to work US daytime shifts as needed 
  

Preferred Skills/qualifications

• Experience in a 24x7x365 Operations and Virtualized Hosting environment
• Strong knowledge of network and application security, network administration, and network storage integration
• Experience with deploying and administrating enterprise products to AWS
• Thorough knowledge of RHEL administration and tuning
• Experience with Chef
• Strong scripting/programming skills with experience in Bash, Perl, Python, SQL, and/or other scripting languages
• Experience working with a global team
• Previous experience in the education industry and e-learning technologies
• Background in content/knowledge management, digital asset management, as well as with education-related technologies
  

To ensure the safety and wellbeing of our employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackboard positions are currently remote (where possible).

This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.

Blackboard is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, protected military/veteran status, or any other legally protected factor.

Location/Division:

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India