CI/CD & DevOps Engineer

Role: CI/CD & DevOps Engineer

The Zcash Foundation is recruiting a CI/CD & DevOps Engineer, who will be responsible for supporting the engineering team by helping us maintain and optimize our development and release infrastructure as we work on building Zebra and its associated projects. The ideal candidate will embody the Foundation’s values, while fully aligning with our mission and goals.

The CI/CD and DevOps engineer will be responsible for the health, operation, maintenance and documentation of CI/CD tools and infrastructure as well as any other services, such as Zcash network nodes, deployed by the organization. They will prioritise and define the severity of issues affecting the Foundation’s infrastructure and services. Other duties include helping with and setting up the necessary tools for integration, load testing and release management. The position reports to the Foundation’s Engineering Manager.

The Foundation’s Core Engineering Projects: Currently the engineering team is working on Zebra, an independent implementation of the Zcash protocol written in Rust, and soon we will dedicate resources on building out Zcash wallet functionality and running some Zebra and zcashd nodes. The successful candidate will be expected to support the engineering team in their work as well as helping to maintain a number of production services and websites which are run by the Foundation.

What We Are Looking For

• Experience with software release processes, optimization and automation
• Experience with Github Actions or similar CI platforms and Google Cloud
• Experience with Docker or other containerization platforms
• Familiarity with version control tools such as git
• Familiarity with security/vulnerability tools
• Familiarity with code coverage analytical tools
• Familiarity with tracing, observability and monitoring solutions
• Familiarity with shell and scripting languages
• Ability to interpret source code
• Team player
• Strong written and oral communication skills

Research indicates that men tend to apply for jobs when they meet just 60% of the criteria, while women and other marginalized groups only apply if they are a 100% match. If you are passionate about the Foundation’s mission and think you have what it takes to be successful in this role even if you don’t check all the boxes, please apply. We would very much appreciate the opportunity to consider your application.

Application & Interview Process

The Foundation will primarily evaluate candidates on the results of their take home project and interviews. Additionally, we look at work samples and collaborative interviews for further evaluation.

Please submit the following:

• Resume (or equivalent)
• Scripting or Automation sample
• Writing sample
• Analysis sample
• Presentation sample

We will follow up within a week of your submission.

Work Samples

We are asking to see samples of work that you have already completed. Feel free to send more than one sample of each if that best reflects your accomplishments relevant to the responsibilities listed for this position. These samples don’t need to be an exact match, for example: if you don’t have a presentation you can share, please share a similar or equivalent sample.

Here’s what we want to see in detail:

Scripting or Automation Sample

We expect this position to produce configuration scripts to automate a number of recurring tasks to save time and effort for our engineers. We use past work to evaluate how you will likely perform in future work for the Foundation. If you don’t have existing public work, that’s OK – just pick something you’ve done and describe it for us in as much detail as necessary to understand it.

Writing Sample

We work remotely on an open source project, so most of our communication with each other, our users, and external contributors happens through text. Send us some writing that you’re proud of. This could be something like:

• Block comment in source code
• Blog post or other long-form article
• Github or forum post (preferably discussing a technical topic)
• Design document or specification
• Whitepaper or academic publication
• Analysis Sample

Zcash is a Bitcoin fork with added privacy features, so we sometimes debug edge cases in an underlying protocol we didn’t design (though we also subject our new designs to intense review and analysis). The ability to pick up a complex existing system and figure out how it works or what might be causing a bug is a critical skill for us. In the analysis sample, tell us about a time you had to analyze a technical system whose abstractions failed you. This could be anything that required developing a deeper understanding, such as a memorable debugging session or a satisfying performance improvement.

Presentation Sample

It’s important that our work is legible both to our collaborators and to the community we serve. Along with writing well, oral presentation skills are an important vehicle for this kind of communication. If you’ve given a technical presentation that is publicly available, please provide a link to the slides and video (if available). If you don’t have a publicly available presentation, please describe a topic you’ve presented in the past.

Interviews

There will be two technical interviews and at least one non-technical interview, all conducted over video chat.

• Before the first technical interview you will be given a take home exercise in which you will be asked to complete a task related to the Zebra CI setup, which we estimate to take 4-6 hours. The results of the exercise will be reviewed as part of a ‘code review’ video call / interview. This interview will focus on how you approached the task and evaluated the various potential approaches as well as any trade offs made.
• The second technical interview will be a system design interview. You and your interviewer will talk through the design for a services dashboard and prioritise the different elements. This task should be representative of some of the work and decisions you may need to make as part of the CI and DevOps Engineer role.
• The non-technical interview will be a conversation focused on your alignment with the Foundation’s values, mission, and goals.

All interviews will be conducted over Google Meet.

About the Zcash Foundation

The Zcash Foundation is a 501(c)(3), nonprofit, public charity that builds and supports privacy infrastructure for the public good. We work on strengthening financial privacy with technology, focusing primarily on the Zcash protocol and blockchain.

We are looking for someone who is as excited as we are about building private financial infrastructure for the public good.

Why work for the Zcash Foundation?

• We are a small start-up nonprofit whose impact exceeds its size.
• Everything we build is open source.
• We are team-oriented and mission-driven.
• We are a fully remote organisation, with team members in the United States, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, and Australia.
• Leadership cares deeply about staff health and fulfillment.
• Nonprofit means what it says! We build and support innovation that serves our mission.

We offer:

• A competitive salary based on experience
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents
• Contribution to employee’s Health Savings Account or to a health insurance deductible
• Parental leave benefits
• 32 days of PTO
• Annual technology credit to support remote work
• Remote working, with a flexible work schedule—driven by results, not hours
• Professional growth opportunities
• The opportunity to work with a talented, dynamic, diverse and committed team

It is the Zcash Foundation’s policy to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital or domestic partner status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, physical characteristics, family care, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, the Zcash Foundation will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.