Last weekend, we had a job fair here at Tucows. We hold job fairs at our Toronto headquarters every three or four months.

I spoke to Crystal McPhee who leads our recruiting to get some insider tips about how to make sure you make the best of a Tucows Job Fair. Here's the scoop:

1. Keeners come early. Arriving early in the day shows you're interested in the job.

2. Dress for success. Once you land the job with us, you get to work in a casual environment. However, first impressions count. So consider wearing business casual clothes to the job fair and not your favourite torn AC/DC t-shirt.

3. Be prepared. Bring a copy of your resume, a pen and a notebook. Brainstorm a list of questions and take notes.

4. Do your homework. Spend some time on our website and blog to learn about what we do and how we do it.

5. Be ready to answer questions and tell us why you want to work at Tucows. We'd like to hear the story of your career so far. You need to be able to tell us who you are, what you've done at previous jobs, how you work and why you'd be an asset to our team.

And there you have five easy tips to help you get the most from our job fairs.

We're always on the look-out for talented folks to join the herd. Click here to see a list of current job openings.

Here's another job opportunity at Tucows: Network Engineer!

About Tucows

For more about Tucows and its work environment, go check out the What Does Tucows Do, Anyway? and The Sort of Person We're Lookng For sections of this blog entry.

Main purpose

As a member of the Networking team, the Network Engineer is responsible for keeping all of Tucows' networks running smoothly so that their regularly scheduled operational, maintenance and support functions are carried out effectively and efficiently. It's a vital jobs — if our networks are out of business, so are we!

Position reports to: Operations Manager

Salary range: Commensurate with experience

Key responsibilities

• Support, update and troubleshoot network hardware and software
• Provide support on NOC and Service Desk issues
• Perform network administration services, day-to-day operations
• First line support of the network for Operations and Engineering implementations
• Perform daily maintenance of the internal and production network, by checking all logs and ensuring no new issues are occurring
• Monitor and resolve service desk tickets quickly
• Perform emergency and planned maintenances in order to fix or prevent network outages
• Work on infrastructure / network related projects such as:
  • Software and hardware upgrades
  • Network expansion
  • Deployment of network applications

  The products include, but are not limited to:

  • Core Switches
  • Distribution Switches
  • Firewalls
  • VPN Appliances
  • Content Switches
  • IPS / IDS's and Sniffers

Ideal Candidate Profile

Related experience / Unique skill set

• At least 2 years work experience as Network Administrator in a medium size network.
• Demonstrated abilities with, and a good working knowledge of:
  • General networking
  • Ethernet
  • TCP/IP
  • DNS
  • DHCP
  • Switching
  • Routing
  • IP Addressing / sub-netting
  • Windows networking
• Excellent communication (written and verbal) and interpersonal skills
• Experience configuring, upgrading and maintaining Cisco switches and routers; hands on required on Catalyst 6500
• Experience configuring, upgrading and maintaining:
  • Cisco PIX
  • Cisco VPN3000
  • Cisco CSS11500
  • Cisco FWSW
  • Cisco IDS/IPS
  • Netscreen firewalls
• Basic Unix administration skills, knowledge of open source network tools an asset
• Experience or exposure in configuring and troubleshooting routing protocols OSPF, BGP

Education

• Bachelor Degree in Computer Science
• CCNA / CCNP

Interpersonal skills

• Excellent organization and time management skills to meet demanding timelines
• Strong interpersonal and customer service skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Highly adaptable with ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast paced, demanding environment
• Must be highly adaptable and able to learn new applications quickly
• Self-motivated, with strong sense of ownership and urgency to deliver projects / tasks in a timely fashion
• Attention to detail required, must be methodical and thorough in problem solving

Other

• Position requires to carry a pager on alternate basis
• Overtime may be required during project implementation

Interested in this job?

If this job sounds like the sort of thing you'd be interested in doing, send your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com, and make sure you put Network Engineer in the subject line!

Job Fair!

Tomorrow, Saturday, February 10th, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Tucows is having a job fair! We've got openings for the following positions:

• Customer Service Representatives
• Technical Support Analysts
• NOC Analysts

“Tucows? You Mean the Shareware Company?”

If you're thinking “Tucows? You mean the shareware company?”, make sure you read about the sort of business we're in. There's a good summary in this article; make a note of the What Does Tucows Do, Anyway? and the The Sort of Person We're Lookng For sections.

What Happens at the Job Fair

At tomorrow's job fair, you'll get to meet one-on-one with actual managers. The managers are people with hiring authority for the open positions; you'll have a brief interview with them where you can talk about your skills and experience and ask questions about Tucows. Successful candidates from tomorrow's interviews will be invited to come back for a more in-depth interview on the week of February 12th.

What to Bring and Where to Go

If you'd like to attend tomorrow's job fair, bring your resume and your “'A' game” to the Tucows offices, located at 96 Mowat Avenue, Toronto (Mowat is a block east of King and Dufferin — you can get here via the Dufferin 29 bus or the King 504 Streetcar; there's plenty of nearby parking too). Each interview is expected to last about 15 minutes, but you should be prepared to spend an hour here to allow for some administrivia and waiting for your interview to come up.

Are you a programmer looking for work? Here at Tucows, we've got another job opening: Senior Application Developer.

What Does Tucows Do, Anyway?

If you're interested in this sort of job, you might want to know the sort of business we're in. Simply put, Tucows is a wholesaler of these specific internet services:

• Domain names
• Hosted email
• Hosted anti-spam solutions
• Digital certificates
• Managed DNS
• Website Builder
• Blogware
• Billing software for ISPs and hosting services

As a wholesaler, we don't directly sell these services to end-users. Rather, we partner with people — many of whom are ISPs and hosting companies — who then resell these services on their own or as part of their own suite of services. Our partners can provision these services to their customers either via a web-based interface or by using our APIs.

By buying these services from us and reselling them instead of setting up and maintaining these services themselves, our partners can worry less about the tech and maintenance aspects of these services and concentrate on provisioning them to their customers and providing them with great service.

The Sort of Person We're Lookng For

Make sure you read this article over at the blog Creating Passionate Users in which Kathy Sierra writes about companies where people are really into their jobs:

People ask me, “How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?” Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial. If I own company FOO, I don't need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they're doing. The company should behave just like a good user interface — support people in doing what they're trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way. Applying the employer-as-UI model, the best company is one in which the employees are so engaged in their work that the company fades into the background.

That's been my experience here at Tucows: the company does a pretty good job at supporting people in their tasks, but also staying the hell out of their way and not binding them down with too many diktats. Do you prefer to work using editor X running on operating system Y? Do it; we don't mandate what's on your desktop. Got ideas on how to do things more effectively and efficiently? The folks here are pretty good at listening to them. Developers here are empowered to be creative while doing their job.

All that freedom means that we're looking for a developer who's a self-starter, capable of working with minimal supervision — or none at all.You'll be part of a team that will be both building new services as well as enhancing, maintaining and supporting existing ones. You also have to be a good team player, leader and teacher, as you may be involved with mentoring and helping junior members of the team.

The systems you'll be working on are big — we're talking millions of transactions a day, for which our customers and customers' customer have paid. In such an environment, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, so we're looking for someone who can crank out high quality code.

You have to be the kind of person who lives to work on challenging problems. There'll be a lot of ground to cover, and the industry changes pretty quickly, so you've got to be the sort of person who wants to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible, while solving those problems. We're looking for someone who takes pride in their work and wants to be proudly describe the type of problems they're working on.

And Now, the Checklists!

Here's what's on the “key responsibilities” checklist of the job posting:

• Design, development and maintenance of code
• Strong code testing and refactoring skills
• Review business and functional requirements
• Production support activities including troubleshooting and resolving the problems
• Assist in release management
• Additional responsibilities as required

Here's the “skills and experience” checklist:

• 5 Years development experience with:
  • Perl (Java and PHP are a bonus)
  • Client/server application development for a Unix/Linux platform
• You should also have experience with:
  • Large scale projects
  • Object-oriented design and development (bonus marks for knowing your design patterns!)
  • Working with RDBMS systems, Oracle in particular as well as PostgreSQL and MySQL
  • Working with web applications and services
  • Writing shell scripts
  • Version control systems

Finally, the “soft skills” checklist:

• Positive and constructive attitude
• Demonstrated team player
• Able to maintain a calm, professional approach when dealing with difficult customers
• Attention to detail required, must be methodical and thorough in problem solving
• Excellent planning and documentation skills
• Excellent time management skills to meet demanding timelines
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Highly adaptable with ability to work in a fast paced demanding environment
• Must be able to own issues from inception to completion
• Must be highly adaptable and able to learn new applications quickly
• Must be team-oriented with ability to work well with multiple teams in a cross-functional setup
• Self-motivated, with strong sense of ownership and urgency to deliver projects / tasks in a timely fashion
• Responsible and accountable

Do You Want This Job?

If you'd like this job and think you can fill a Tucows Senior Dveeloper's shoes, we want to hear from you! Email your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com and refer to [Dev-2007-02-07-248] Senior Application Developer in the subject line.

If you're looking for work at a company with a good reputation, name recognition, great people and opportunities for you to shine, may I suggest working here at Tucows?

On Saturday, February 10th between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., we're having an open house. We're looking for people to fill the following positions:

• Customer Service Representatives
• Technical Support Analysts
• NOC Analysts

You'll get the chance to meet our management team from Technical Support, Retail Services and our Network Operations Centre, and you can talk about youself and the opportunities that Tucows can offer you.

If you can make it, we'd love to see you here! We're located at 96 Mowat Avenue in Toronto, just a block east of the corner of King and Dufferin.

Can't make it? See your resume to hrdept@tucows.com and let us know which position you're interested in.

Here's another job opportunity that's opened up at Tucows: NOC Assistant. The details are below — if you're interested, email your resume and a cover letter (make sure that NOC Analyst is the subject line of your email) to our HR Department at hrdept@tucows.com!

Join our group of talented Analysts in monitoring, analyzing and resolving system and network troubles.  Bring your technical expertise in:

• Configuring and maintaining UNIX servers
• TCP/IP concepts
• DNS
• RAID technologies
• Email protocols

LDAP

• Web server farms
• Backup and recovery technologies
• Shell scripting

To complete your skills you possess post-secondary education in computer sciences or engineering, and 1-2 years experience with the technologies.  In addition you have strong problem solving and analytical skills, excellent verbal and written skills, and proven time management skills that will aid you in our faced paced production environment.  We‚Äôre also looking for flexible individuals, as our NOC Center operates 24x7x365 ‚Äì applicants must be available to work rotating shifts and on short notice.

What is “Email Services”?

We've got a job opening for a product manager for Email Services, which comprises two of our biggest services:

• Hosted Email: Lets you offer email service to your customers without the hassle. As the name implies, we host and maintain the email server, while you manage email accounts via a web interface or API. We take care of the headaches of running the system, so you can concentrate on taking care of your customers.
• Email Defense: Our anti-spam/anti-virus service, which you can use in conjuction with either our hosted email service or any other email service out there. As with hosted email, we run the system and maintain it, you provision the service and focus on customer service.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for the right person to manage these services, boost the profitability of our email portfolio and develop new email services to offer to our partners. If you've got an understanding of email and the email business, the skills and creativity to develop new services on our email platform and the experience and industry contacts to back you up, we've got a job for you!

As the product manager for Email Services, you'll be working with a number of different people within Tucows:

• Business analysts, to determine requirements.
• Developers, to turn those requirements into reality.
• Marketing (which includes me), to figure out things like the go-to-market strategy, and to help them understand the product positioning, key benefits and target customer.
• Sales, to help them sell email services.
• Key customers, who may have special requirements and feedback.

Key Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the position include:

• Managing the entire product life cycle from strategic planning to tactical activities, from launch to retirement of the product within your portfolio.
• Justifying new business lines through market demand assessment and financial justification.
• Specifying market requirements for current and future products by conducting market research supported by continual contact with customers and prospects.
• Act as a subject matter expert for the products within your portfolio to the company.
• Continually assess and improve on the success of your portfolio with key stakeholders.
• Developing and implementing launch plans for new products, working with all departments to execute.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate for the position will have these qualities:

Related Experience / Unique Skill Set

• 3 or more years' worth of experience in product management
• Knowledge of technology, and yes, extensive experience with email is preferred

Education

• A post-secondary degree, preferably in business or computer science.

Interpersonal Skills

• You must possess a unique blend of business and technical savvy; a big-picture vision, and the drive to make that vision a reality.
• You must enjoy spending time in the market to understand their problems, and find innovative solutions for the broader market.
• You must be able to work with minimal supervision and be capable of exercising independent judgment across a broad range of situations.
• You must demonstrate an ability to learn new technologies quickly.
• You'll need superior verbal and written communication skills.
• You'll definitely need excellent time management and organizations skills, and a high comfort level in an ever-changing, fast paced environment.
• You must have the ability to work collaboratively as part of cross-functional teams.

Does This Sound Like the Kind of Job For You?

If it does, please email and resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com; make sure that the subject line contains Product Manager, Email Services.

Recommended Reading

Be sure to check out our pages on hosted email and Email Defense.

We've got a couple of new job openings here at Tucows:

• Oracle DBA — it's been filled!
  
• Data Center Technician — it's been filled!

Read on for more details, and if you're interested, send your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com; be sure to mention the position for which you're applying in the subject line.

Oracle DBA [Update: This position has been filled!]

[This position has since been filled, but we're leaving the post up for reference.]

We're looking for an Oracle DBA — here's the info about the position, straight from the Human Resources folks…

Main Purpose

Primary responsibility will be the administration and pro-active management of a 24×7 Oracle Production environment. This position will require being part of a Tier 2 on-call rotation schedule. Your primary duties will encompass responsibility for various Tucows‚Äô Oracle databases (with prime responsibilities for hosted messaging) including proactive monitoring and problem resolution, trend analysis, capacity planning and management, vulnerability management, procedure and configuration documentation as well as project participation for any new and related projects.

Secondary duties will likely include support and administration of other database technologies – specifically MySQL.

Key Reponsibilities

• Plans, coordinates and administers matters related to all Tucows Oracle databases, including base definition, structures, documentation, upgrades, long-range requirements and capacity planning, operational guidelines and protection
• Evaluates and executes requests for database configuration changes. Provides input to development and reporting teams to support efficient usage of Oracle resources
• Ensures accuracy and completeness of data in master files and various support tools, such as base dictionaries
• Establishes and maintains security integrity controls according to Tucows‚Äô policies
• Formulates and monitors policies, procedures and standards relating to database management
• Will be called upon to plan and direct the following: troubleshooting, recovery, tuning of the database, software installation and upgrades, resolving Oracle errors and failures, auditing activities, and resource utilization
• Secondary objective will be to take on the above responsibilities for MySQL and Postgres production databases on a timetable appropriate for the skill level

Ideal Candidate Profile

Related experience / skill set:

• Minimum of 5 years of related experience
• A seasoned and experienced Oracle Database professional with a full understanding of industry practices and company policies and procedures
• Must be able to resolve a wide range of issues in creative as well as practical ways
• Ideal candidate would also have experience as a MySQL DBA or developer
• Will work on problems of diverse scope where analysis of data requires evaluation of identifiable and intangible factors. Must demonstrate good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining solutions

Educational requirements:

• Successful completion of post-secondary education in Computer Sciences or Information Technology
• Oracle DBA Certification considered an asset

Required interpersonal skills

• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Attention to detail required, must be methodical and thorough in problem solving
• Must be team-oriented with ability to work well with multiple teams in a cross-functional setup
• Highly adaptable with ability to work in a fast paced demanding environment
• Excellent time management skills to meet demanding timelines
• Excellent planning and documentation skills
• Self-motivated, with strong sense of ownership and urgency to deliver projects / tasks in a timely fashion

Data Center Technician [Update: This position has been filled!]

[This position has since been filled, but we're leaving the post up for reference.]

We're also looking for a data center technician, and here's the info about the position. Please note that this position involves travel to the UK and the US (a plus, in my opinion; I still like business travel), so it's open only to people who've got the necessary travel documents.

Main Purpose

As a Data Center Technician, you will be responsible for overseeing all Tucows collocation facilities with operational direction from the Data Centre Team lead. This includes adhering to defined Deployment standards, Change management processes and detailed documentation & inventory tracking.

Key Responsibilities

• Adhere to deployment & change standards for all Tucows collocation facilities
• In cooperation with the Data Centre Team Lead, maintenance of all related documentation including: to scale vertical rack diagrams (physical server/device layout for each rack); to scale ceiling rack diagrams (bird eye view of all racks); detailed power map (all circuits and type, attached PDUs, special connectors, etc.); remote power/PDU port inventory (for each server/device, what PDU(s) and port(s) are used); Ethernet cabling inventory (what Ethernet port used by each server/device); telecommunications service inventory/details
• Assist with all deployments at collocation facilities including: space planning/expansion; power requirements/deployment; rack assignment for all servers/devices; maintain inventory of all hardware at each collocation facility
• Candidate may be required to travel once a month on average to remote facilities in the US and the UK for 5 days at a time (excluding travel time) on average

Ideal Candidate Profile

Related experience / Unique skill set

• 2+ years related experience with collocation facility management
• Good understanding of electrical systems in a data centre environment including transformers, generators, UPS systems, PDUs, etc.
• Good understanding of mechanical systems in a data centre environment including chillers, airflow fundamentals, deployment best practices, etc.
• Good working knowledge of TCP/IP networking basics a strong asset
• Some working knowledge of server hardware including installation of hard drives, motherboards, memory, hard drives, etc.
• Windows and Linux Operating system experience an asset

Education

• Ideal candidate will have at least 2 years of post graduate experience in hands-on facilities management in a Data Centre environment

Interpersonal skills

• The ideal candidate will be able to maintain good relations with the NOC and Operations departments as well as the many vendors being managed to support the collocation facilities. The NOC and Operations departments would be considered the primary customer.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills

Other

• The candidate will be required to travel once a month on average to remote facilities in London and the US for 5 days at a time (excluding travel time) on average
• Must have ability to travel freely to international destinations

Here's yet another job opening: MySQL System Administrator. Here's the info I have on the position:

Primary responsibility will be the administration and pro-active management of 24×7 MySQL Production environments. This position will require being part of a Tier 2 on-call rotation schedule. Primary duties will encompass responsibility for various Tucows‚Äô MySQL databases including proactive monitoring and problem resolution, trend analysis, capacity planning and management, vulnerability management, procedure and configuration documentation as well as project participation for any new and related projects.

Secondary duties will include support and administration of other database technologies – specifically Oracle and possibly Postgres.

The position's key responsibilities are:

• Planning, coordinating and administering matters related to all Tucows‚Äô MySQL databases, including base definition, structures, documentation, upgrades, long-range requirements and capacity planning, operational guidelines and protection
• Evaluating and executing requests for database configuration changes. Providing input to development and reporting teams to support efficient usage of MySQL resources
• Ensuring accuracy and completeness of data in master files and various support tools, such as base dictionaries
• Establishing and maintaining security integrity controls according to Tucows‚Äô policies
• Formulating and monitoring policies, procedures and standards relating to database management
• You'll be called upon to plan and direct the following:
     
  • Troubleshooting
  • Recovery
  • Tuning of the database
  • Software installation and upgrades
  • Resolving MySQL errors and failures
  • Auditing activities
  • Resource utilization
• Transition into taking on similar responsibilities for Oracle and/or Postgres Production environments on an appropriate timetable for skill level with Oracle and Postgres

Here's the experience and skill set we're looking for:

• Minimum of 5 years of related experience
• A seasoned and experienced MySQL Database professional with a full understanding of industry practices and company policies and procedures
• Must be able to resolve a wide range of issues in creative as well as practical ways
• Ideal candidate would also have experience as an Oracle or Postgres DBA or Developer
• Will work on problems of diverse scope where analysis of data requires evaluation of identifiable and intangible factors. Must demonstrate good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining solutions.

Think you're up to the job? Apply by emailing your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com; be sure to include MySQL Sysadmin in the email's subject line.

Here's another job position we need to fill: Technical Support Analyst. Here are the details of the position…

The Technical Support Analyst provides responsive technical support to customers in solving product functionality problems. S/he may also provide background support for other Tier 2 team members.

The responsibilities of the position include:

• Responding to customers' telephone or email queries regarding problems
• Monitoring major customer environments to ensure a high level of system / application availability
• Determining the nature and likely causes of the problem, recommends corrective action and guides the customer through the necessary steps
• Reviewing more urgent or complex problems with product support to ensure appropriate measures are taken
• Acting as interface with third party suppliers (these may be internal or external contacts)
• Assisting Quality Assurance by testing products and reporting problems
• Makeing recommendations regarding technical support procedures
• Training employees on products and technical procedures
• Providing technical support and assistance to sales personnel and customers through the selling cycle
• Providing product installation and customization as well as after-sale support

Technical support is one of our branches where we need to be available to our customers at odd hours, so please note that to qualify for the position:

• You must be able to work eight-hour shifts between the hours of 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM
• You may be required to perform on-call / shift work over weekends

Requirements for the position are:

   
• 2 – 3 years' experience in a Call center customer support environment (e-mail and phone support)

   

• Ability to document frequently asked questions (eg., “How do I perform this procedure?”)

   

• Experience and strong understanding of at least some of the following:
         
  • Web based email packages
  • Managed DNS packages
  • DNS Management tools
  • Blog software
  • Website building software

   

• 2 years experience administering email and web servers (Apache, Stronghold, Microsoft, IIS)

   

• Experience with:
         
  • Linux on Intel (Red Hat)
  • Solaris on SPARC/Intel (versions 2.5.1, 2.6, 7)       
  • BSD-based systems on Intel (FreeBSD)
  • Perl scripting
  • SQL
  • Microsoft SQL Server (versions 7.0, 2000, 2005)
  • Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server

   

• Experience with the following would be beneficial:
         
  • Mail (Sendmail, IMAP, POP)       
  • FTP (wu ftpd, ncftpd)       
  • PHP programming skills       
  • Familiarity with Banter ticketing system   

Since the position involves dealing with customers, you're going to need the following “soft skills”:

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to learn new applications quickly
• Attention to detail required, must be methodical and thorough in problem solving
• “Team player”
• Strong customer service orientation
• Ability to maintain a calm, professional approach when dealing with difficult customers

Here are the educational requirements:

A degree or diploma in Computer Science or equivalent, and / or a minimum of 1-2 years experience in an Internet / customer support related environment (related environments are for example Bell call center, Level II support for a mid-sized ISP, etc.)

If this sounds like a job you'd like to take on, be sure to download the full job description [You can apply by emailing your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com; be sure to include Technical Support Analyst in the email's subject line.