Linux Admin

About the job

As a Linux System Administrator at Chordify, you’ll help maintain and improve the server infrastructure that supports both our users and colleagues. You’ll work on systems that keep Chordify running: from internal services and databases to configuration management, networking, backups, storage, and deployment processes.

Within Chordify, you’ll join the Digital Infrastructure team: a small team whose mission is to provide secure, stable, and reliable infrastructure for Chordify’s operations. Ultimately, our users have a great experience on our apps and web thanks to the infrastructure that you help provide.

This role is a great fit for someone with solid Linux system administration or infrastructure experience who enjoys improving existing systems, bringing structure where things are still handmade, and taking responsibility for work that really matters. Our infrastructure has grown over time, and not everything is as polished or documented as we would like it to be. That means there is a lot of room to make an impact.

You’ll help us move from mostly maintaining the current situation to also improving what comes next. That could mean redesigning and migrating systems, professionalizing parts of our setup, improving reliability, or finishing long-postponed infrastructure projects that help the whole company move forward.

You'll thrive here if you:

• Have strong hands-on experience with Linux system administration, infrastructure, DevOps, SysOps, platform engineering, or systems engineering

• Have experience with Linux servers, including configuration, storage, permissions, backups, and troubleshooting

• Understand networking, services, databases, caching, load balancing, storage, backups, and how these parts work together in a larger system

• Can design, build, maintain, improve, and debug systems made up of multiple cooperating machines

• Are careful, precise, and aware that infrastructure work can have serious consequences

• Can take ownership of complex work and break it down into practical steps

• Communicate clearly and can explain what you are doing, what you are aiming for, and where you need input

• Are constructive, proactive, and willing to ask questions or ask for help when needed

• Are mindful of security trade-offs and keep cybersecurity in mind in your work

• Are comfortable carrying serious responsibility, especially when urgent infrastructure issues arise

• Preferably located in the Netherlands

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience with our current or related technology stack, such as Puppet, MariaDB, HAProxy, ProxySQL, Redis, Docker, Nginx, Nagios, WireGuard, or object storage

• Experience with containerisation, CI/CD, GitLab, self-hosted services, or internal developer tooling

• Experience mentoring, supporting, or helping other technical colleagues grow

• Experience with infrastructure modernization, migrations, observability, automation, or reliability improvements

• An interest in music

Why join us?

• Are a bunch of friendly, open, always caring people, from a variety of cultural and professional backgrounds

• Are an autonomous workforce, with our own flavor of the Holacracy method

• Serve tens of millions of users with a fairly lean server infrastructure

• Want everybody to be able to have real impact without micromanagement

• Love music!

Our work philosophy is simple: We believe in an autonomous workforce where everybody takes care of themselves and their work. We call it Chortonomy, where everyone does what they know best, and with all our skills combined we make Chordify. Please read our blog about the heart and soul of Chordify if you want to know more about what makes us tick.

You will

• Be part of the Digital Infrastructure team: a multidisciplinary team that focuses on designing, maintaining, refining, and improving the infrastructure that runs our internal services and supports the millions of people who use Chordify every day

• Maintain and improve Linux servers, services, databases, storage, backups, networking, and deployment processes

• Set up and maintain services for colleagues, such as CI/CD or other self-hosted services

• Design new and improve existing ways of doing things, in collaboration with the people who need them

• Work on infrastructure projects that help the team move forward, not only maintain the current situation

• Help professionalize parts of our infrastructure while staying practical about what is possible

• Collaborate with other server admins, spot inefficiencies, debug errors, investigate mysteries, and propose improvements

• Use version-controlled configuration management to test and deploy your changes

• Keep cybersecurity, reliability, and maintainability in mind at all times

• Give and receive constructive feedback about how things work, both in the infrastructure and in the team

• Support colleagues by explaining technical topics clearly and helping turn complex infrastructure needs into practical next steps

In your first months, we’ll help you get familiar with our way of working, our infrastructure, and how Chordify is organized. You’ll start by getting to know the current setup and by taking on a non-trivial infrastructure project, so you can learn by doing while already helping the team move forward.

Over time, you’ll grow into someone who can independently take ownership of significant infrastructure projects, help define what needs to happen next. After 12 months, success means you have helped us finish a couple of innovative projects that move our infrastructure forward but that we've never quite found time for.

There is a lot of room to influence how we work. We are looking for someone who can bring experience, ask sharp questions, improve what is already there, and help us build infrastructure that is more reliable, maintainable, and ready for the future.

You get

• A gross monthly salary of €3464 to €5914 (excluding 8% yearly holiday allowance) depending on your skills, expertise, and experience

• A fulltime contract which means you work between 32-40 hours a week, your choice

• Flexible working hours

• To work at either our Utrecht or Groningen office and, if you want, partially from home

• A pension scheme

• A daily free lunch, snacks, and drinks

• Commuting expenses reimbursed

• The possibility to take part in our lease bike program

• A budget each year to spend on anything music related

• To be part of an international team of music lovers

• To enjoy after-work drinks, jam-sessions, or gaming nights in the office with fellow Chordifyers whenever you feel like it

• To make music during work

• To trade public holidays for other days that are important to you

• To focus on your mental health through OpenUp

Meet the team

Our take on requirements

You don’t need to tick every box to apply. We care more about your curiosity, motivation, and willingness to learn than about a perfect match on paper.

If this role sounds exciting, and you feel you could grow into it, we’d love to hear from you. We especially encourage you to apply if you bring a different perspective, background, or path into tech.