Systems Engineer

Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN)

The Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) is a not-for-profit institution which was founded around 2005 by the University of Malawi and Mzuzu University. It was established to create and operate an academic network interconnecting research and education institutions within Malawi and with their regional and global peers through the UbuntuNet Alliance.

The organization became fully operational in 2018 through funding from the Digital Malawi Project – a Project of the Malawi Government funded by the World Bank. So far, MAREN has managed to interconnect at least sixty sites including all the public universities at higher bandwidths. To date, the organization has been managed by consultants who were hired by the Project to facilitate its operationalization. Having been capacitated by the Project, MAREN is now in a position to recruit its own staff. Applications are therefore invited from suitably qualified, highly skilled, experienced, competent and visionary Malawians to fill the following position.

SYSTEMS ENGINEER
The Systems Engineer shall report to the Systems Manager. S/he will be responsible for:

    • Managing and monitoring all installed systems and infrastructure
    • Installing, configuring, testing and maintaining operating systems, application software and system management tools
    • Proactively ensuring the highest levels of systems and infrastructure availability
    • Monitoring and testing application performance for potential bottlenecks, identifying possible solutions, and implementing those fixes
    • Maintaining security, backup, and redundancy strategies
    • Writing and maintaining custom scripts to increase system efficiency and lower the human intervention time on any tasks
    • Participating in the design of information and operational support systems
    • Being the first line of client help desk support and pro-actively engaging clients on system issues
    • Liaising with vendors and other IT personnel for problem resolution 
    • Developing and supporting software systems for end users
    • Any other duties assigned by MAREN management from time to time.

Qualifications and Experience
A suitable candidate shall have:

    • A Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or a related fields from an accredited University
    • Solid experience in developing and supporting systems in the past 2 years
    • Proven working experience in installing, configuring and troubleshooting UNIX/Linux based environments.
    • Solid experience in the administration and performance tuning of application stacks (e.g.Tomcat, JBoss, Apache, Ruby, NGINX)
    • A good knowledge of Cloud services
    • Experience with virtualization and containerization (e.g.. VMware, Virtual Box)
    • Experience with DevOps and practical use of Ansible playbooks
    • Experience with monitoring systems
    • Experience with automation software (e.g., Puppet, cfengine, Chef)
    • Solid scripting skills (e.g., shell scripts, Perl, Ruby, Python)
    • Solid knowledge of modern programming languages such as Java, PH and their trending development environments/frameworks

Term of office
The SE shall be on a 3 year contract renewable based on performance.

REMUNERATION
The positions above come with a competitive compensation and benefits package in accordance with MARE’s existing structure of benefits.

Applicants are invited to submit a cover letter, Curriculum Vitae, and names and contact details of three traceable referees to the Finance and Administration Manager by the following email: recruitment@maren.ac.mw

Applications should be received not later than 24th March, 2023.