DevOps Platform Engineer

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DevOps Platform Engineer

May 16, 2025
3:00 am

At a Glance

We are seeking a DevOps Engineer to help us administer and support our small but critical FreeBSD based environments. This is traditional role, like the standard Unix/Linux systems administrator. Today this usually marketed as separate roles: DevOps, Platform Engineer, SRE, Cloud, and Infrastructure Engineer. Here at SecureMessage we’re on a mission to fix the Internet, fix the tech job scene, and lead the return to normalcy. Even though the job title is “DevOps Platform Engineer”, you’ll actually be the more useful “Unix/Linux Systems Administrator”. There is no Kubernetes (k8s) here, no complexity, no over-engineering. For this role, you need to know the platform (FreeBSD), understand the tech stack (PHP, MariaDB, Apache, HAProxy, Varnish, Postfix, etc), and know about the modern self-host tools (Jenkins, Terraform/OpenTofu, OpenBao, Salt, etc). We don’t expect you do know it all or be an expert, but a willingness to learn and execute is essential for success.

Where You'll Be

This role is fully remote and open for US based applicants only. You may work from your home office or a shared office space.

What You will do

This is a problem solving role. You’ll be performing a variety of tasks relating to building out infrastructure, maintaining it, optimizing it, and troubleshooting. You’ll install software, setup CI/CD deployment pipelines, and create configuration files. You’ll write out and provision infrastructure as code, automated configuration management, shell scripts, and reproducible deployments. Your day to day is reading documentation, figuring stuff out, and putting solutions into place. A drive to learn, an open mind, and creativity are essential requirements. You’ll work primarily on FreeBSD, but you may also be exposed to other operating systems such as Ubuntu or Rocky Linux. You may sometimes be asked to work on client specific projects. Unfortunately, dealing with Docker and k8s may be unavoidable in certain cases, but we’ll try to limit that.

What we are looking for

First and foremost, a willingness and ability to learn fast. We don’t expect you to know it all on day 1.
Between 2 – 3 years of relevant experience in DevOps, cloud operations, system administration, or infrastructure.
Understanding of secure software deployment, application security, system security concepts, and best practices.
Solid understanding of the Unix/Linux CLI, SSH, PKI, shell scripting, and Unix/Linux concepts.
Experience with FreeBSD will give you an advantage.
Experience with Jails is a plus

Additional Information

Compensation for this role depends on location and experience. Average yearly salary for this position is between $20,000 and $45,000. This is a part time (with the possibility of becoming full-time) remote only position with no travel requirements.

What to Expect

SecureMessage is changing the way people work. Your job is not your life, our employees work Monday – Thursday for 6 hours a day (9:30 AM to 3:30 PM). We offer several paid federal, Christian, and Catholic holidays, as well as Columbus Day, Halloween, Election Day, and your Birthday. Everyone has access to a flexible unlimited “take as you need” vacation policy. Additionally, our business shuts down at the end of each year in observance of Yule, usually the last 12 days of the month of December. Finally, we do not use video conferencing, our meetings are audio only. Daily interaction is primarily text based communication with real-time chat and (of course) Email!

SecureMessage is changing the way software is built. Here there are no Agile or Scrum rituals to waste your time that result in poor quality software with frequent superfluous releases and minimal impact. We schedule our new releases during the fall and publish refinement during the spring. Giving both our customers and developers ample time to plan their strategy and set expectations.

Our Interview Process:

Resume Review
Email Based Screening Questionnaire
Technical Skills Assessment/Interview
Background Check & Identity Verification
Offer

Note: SecureMessage does not ask for references, we believe this is an outdated practice and prefer to get to know you by you alone.