System Engineer

**📝 Contractor Role. This is a freelance/contractor position, so you’ll be responsible for managing your own taxes and invoicing.**

**🌍 Fully Remote from Canada or Europe**

**About the Role**

We are looking for a hands-on Senior Linux / Web Hosting Engineer to manage and optimize our hosting infrastructure, primarily focused on WHM/cPanel, Plesk, and WordPress/WooCommerce environments.

This role is ideal for someone with strong systems administration and web hosting experience, complemented by the ability to support DevOps practices including CI/CD, automation, and site reliability.

**Key Responsibilities**

**Infrastructure & Systems**

- Manage and maintain Linux-based servers (LAMP/LEMP stack)
- Administer and optimize WHM/cPanel and Plesk environments
- Perform server provisioning, configuration, and patching
- Monitor system health, uptime, and performance

**WordPress & WooCommerce**

- Optimize WordPress and WooCommerce performance under load
- Troubleshoot slow queries, plugin conflicts, and scaling issues
- Implement caching strategies (Redis, Memcached, OPcache)

**Security & Hardening**

- Implement server and application-level security best practices
- Configure and maintain firewalls (iptables, CSF), fail2ban, and malware scanners
- Handle incident response and remediation

**Email & Deliverability**

- Configure and troubleshoot mail systems within WHM/Plesk
- Improve email deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- Diagnose and resolve spam or blacklisting issues

**Database & Performance**

- Optimize MySQL/MariaDB performance
- Analyze slow queries and improve database efficiency
- Tune Apache/Nginx and PHP-FPM for performance

**Backup & Reliability**

- Design and maintain backup and disaster recovery strategies
- Ensure high availability and minimal downtime

**Communication**

- Coordinate with development team and stakeholders
- English mastery (written and verbal) is essential for clear documentation and reporting

**Required Skills & Experience**

- 5+ years of experience in Linux system administration
- Strong hands-on experience with WHM/cPanel and/or Plesk
- Strong expertise in LAMP/LEMP stack (Linux, Apache/Nginx, MySQL, PHP)
- Proven experience supporting WordPress/WooCommerce in production
- Solid understanding of DNS, SSL, HTTP(S), and email systems
- Experience with server security hardening and monitoring
- Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills
- Bash scripting (required)

**Preferred Skills**

- Experience with Cloudflare or CDN optimization
- Familiarity with basic CI/CD workflows
- Experience with Docker (light usage)
- Advanced scripting (Python, Perl, or PHP)
- PCI compliance knowledge
- Experience with monitoring tools and observability