First, note the new skin on the blog (and elsewhere around pfsense.org). Jared has been busy on both the front-end and back-end of the various websites (blog, forum, etc.) Huge props to him for his efforts.

Second, due to growth in our commercial support, development and rebranding services, we’re in need of a consultant. Unless you live in Austin, TX, this is a full time (40 hours a week), permanent, work from home position. Exact hours will depend on the chosen candidate’s preference, but need to be mostly sometime between 8 PM and 8 AM US Eastern time to provide coverage for overseas customers.

Some options that would work well would be someone located in North America working third shift, someone in Europe or similar time zones working normal business hours, or someone in Australia or similar time zones working normal business hours there.

Our clients are mostly IT firms with at least intermediate skills with firewalls and networking. Many are primarily server administrators, or software developers, or jack of all trades folks at small to mid-sized companies or consultants for such companies. They come to us for people who live and breathe firewalls, networking, security and related areas. We don’t employ “first level” people as they wouldn’t meet our customers’ needs. Everyone currently on staff has in excess of 10 years’ experience, and the successful candidate for this position likely will have at least 7 years experience.

Requirements

  • Native English speaker or equivalent fluency - this person will interact with customers all over the world, via phone, chat and email, using English as the common language. Successful candidate will likely be a native English speaker, though we know from speaking with our customers in Europe and elsewhere around the world that there are many non-native English speakers who communicate as effectively in English as any native speaker.
  • Must have reliable, good quality high speed Internet connectivity - this person will have an extension from our VoIP PBX colocated at one of our customers in eastern Canada. We know from experience that voice quality is acceptable up to at least 250 ms latency where there is relatively minimal jitter. The typical residential DSL or cable broadband service in first world countries anywhere in the world should suffice. The first Internet connection is the employee’s responsibility. Where a secondary connection is available at a reasonable cost, we will reimburse the full cost of the secondary Internet connection for purposes of redundancy and multi-WAN testing and experience.
  • Firewall support experience - must have experience supporting multiple vendors’ firewalls. Experience specifically with pfSense® is highly desirable but not required, as anyone experienced in firewall support should be able to pick it up quickly.
  • Solid customer service skills.
  • Senior-level system administration skills on FreeBSD - while minimal actual system administration is involved (short of some involvement maintaining our hosting servers), such skills are key to being able to support and help maintain pfSense and derived products.
  • Solid network administration and troubleshooting skills - Proficient with IP routing, dynamic routing protocols (OSPF and BGP in particular), packet analysis with tcpdump and Wireshark, switch configuration and troubleshooting, general network troubleshooting, quality of service, and network design mostly for small to mid sized networks.
  • General computer security expertise
  • Some programming background - while not a programming position, everyone on our staff must at least have the ability to read PHP code and make minor modifications.
  • Self-motivated and able to complete tasks with minimal supervision and guidance - our entire team is always willing to help, and some time to get up to speed is expected, but we don’t have time for significant hands-on management of staff and don’t micromanage. Everyone is required to complete assigned tasks with minimal oversight.

Desirable qualifications

  • Experience in a consulting role highly desirable - our existence, as with any consulting-focused company, is dependent on highly detailed and timely time tracking.
  • Prior experience in work from home positions desirable (unless you’re going to be based in Austin, TX)

Responsibilities

  • Support - Phone, ticket and live chat support are a significant portion of this role. Most all support requests are setting up new installs, or adding things to existing installs. Very little of what we do is break/fix support, as short of network problems outside the firewall and occasional hardware issues, as anyone experienced with pfSense knows, once it’s up and running, it “just works.” Quality Assurance - assist in QA testing, and contribute to the development of more automated QA processes and procedures.

Company information

This position is with ESF LLC, the corporation behind the pfSense project. We’ve been in business for going on seven years, and have been offering support and related services for nearly six years. We’ve grown significantly every year, are stable and solely self-funded (we answer to our customers and the community, not investors).

If you’re interested, please do get in-touch.