Hey! My name is John and I've been at Ashby for around a year now, excited to meet you!

We're continuing to hire into the IT team here at Ashby. We're now a team of two (myself and Mike) and we want to continue building a world class function that keeps Ashby supremely productive with a surprisingly small and effective team.

All the responsibilities and requirements are outlined below so have a look. Some points to consider as you’re reading through:

• This is a similar job posting to what we had open earlier this year. That's intentional, the type of person we're looking for hasn't changed a huge amount even if the projects that are the focus has! If you applied last year and you think you'd be a great fit, you're welcome to apply again. Extra points for telling us what's changed between the previous application and now that we should consider when looking through your application!

• We remain quite a technical, engineering-forward IT team at Ashby. That means there's a fair bit of work happening in Typescript microservices and dealing with external systems via APIs of all flavours. If you're not confident with the general logic and concepts surrounding modern software engineering this might not be the role for you. Whilst AI can fill in some of the gaps, there's an expectation of a level of comfort with the programming aspects we believe are important for a modern IT team.

• As folks in IT we strongly believe in technology as a great enabling force. We’re always looking for novel ways to tackle problems at the fundamental level, and that means we’re looking for someone who sees the world a little differently. Whether that’s automating your home out of needing light switches or creating the most glorious CI/CD pipeline in existence we’re looking for people whose technical knowledge and obsession with optimisation can make extraordinary outcomes happen. If you're broadly satisfied with how the world (and the IT world in particular) works currently and you don't have an insatiable itch to fix it, this might not be the place for you.

• Finally, the problems we help people tackle daily are as much emotional as they are technical. Whilst it’s great to be able to provide the best technical solution to an issue, we strive to be able to deliver emotional catharsis alongside this. That means listening to people, meeting them where they are and providing the reassurance, empathy and genuine human connection that every great support interaction should have.

• I’m the hiring manager for this role and would be the manager for the successful candidate as well. If you want to learn a little more of my background I have a public about me page you’re welcome to look through!

Responsibilities:

Own and triage customer issues from ingest through to resolution, whether that’s a one-time fix or a full project including org-wide changes. You'll join the rotation everyone on the team shares helping our colleagues do their best work.

Offer, advocate and then implement best practices for an IT function that is securely creating the most productive workforce in the world.

Own projects across device management (think Iru, Crowdstrike), identity management (think Okta, Google Workspace), hardware logistics (think laptop shipping, 3 way invoice matching) and user lifecycle (onboarding, offboarding and user changes) to automate manual process and reduce our touchpoints to solely those where the human interaction matters

Requirements:

• Experience across a range of technical systems, good understanding of systems design, APIs and the underlying technologies that make modern SaaS systems work

• Desire to work in and help build a small team of experts with an open, engaged and radically efficient profile

• A strong belief that end user support is an equally important part of being a well-rounded engineer as building world-class automations

• The ambition to challenge norms and build for scale and flexibility outside of the expected

• The humility to accept the thoughts and emotions of others as valuable before your own and be vulnerable in front of others

• The wisdom to know when it’s best to apply the above

Non-requirements:

• Deep experience in exactly our tech stack. Always useful, always teachable

• A certain amount of years of experience in the IT world in particular

• Living in the "right" place. We're a remote company and we will hire from anywhere with EU/US timezones where it's reasonable to do so. Depending on the location and circumstances, we might be able to sponsor visas but we can't guarantee it until offer.

A sample of what you could end up working on over time:

• Helping end users with their everyday issues, tracing those back to root causes and rolling out fixes that are structural and lasting where it makes sense to do so.

• Using Terraform and Git to make our critical systems (device management, IAM) transparent, self-documenting and audit-ready

• Rolling out more nuanced authentication policies to ensure device and posture attestation alongside update policies for devices and software

• Advocating for role-based access control and birthright access as well as tackling the upstream implications of this in terms of people data change-control and planning

• Automating everyday processes such as managed device reconciliation across systems using code (Typescript)

• Building rollout automation so we can stagger our changes in a way that will survive rapid growth and change in the business

What you’ll not be working on:

• Break/fix cycles where root causes can reasonably be tackled. You should be empowered to fix problems not delay symptoms.

• Non-stop tickets. Everyone in the team is expected to contribute equally to interrupt-driven and systemic issues, no first or second line here.

• Traditional corporate IT. We use a relatively standard “startup stack” which means nearly everything is cloud based, devices are majority MacOS with a very small Linux subset and we have the agency and ability to move fast and with outsized impact.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.

• 10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.

• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.

• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!

• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.

• If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.

How this hiring process works

We want to try and be as transparent as possible about how our hiring process works. Here's what we're doing for this role:

The interview phase

If you're invited to continue with the application, congratulations! Here's what will happen next:

1. You will be invited to book time in for a 30 minute call with a recruiter (or me if I have time) for a basic screen. We'll be looking for answers to initial questions like:

   1. Why do you want this role?

   2. Can you clearly and crisply convey both your technical and social capability to excel in this role?

   3. Are there outstanding questions we can answer?

2. Assuming this goes well we'll invite you back for a longer (60 minute) hiring manager interview with me. In this interview we will:

   1. Dive much deeper into your background and try and tease out concrete examples of technical ability

   2. Test your ability to think more broadly and ambitiously about what excellence looks like in IT

   3. Answer any deeper questions you might have now we're further into the process and you have more context on the company and tech stack.

3. The next stage is a test where we'll aim to get a better understanding of how you might operate in an environment such as Ashby's and how comfortable you'd be handling similar problems to the ones you might see here.

   1. Depending on capacity and plans, it might be Mike or myself running this

   2. This will likely be a "live" problem where we'll work through something defined and focussed together. No previous preparation is necessary and hopefully this will make for a nice change from the more conversational other interview stages!

4. Following this, you'll get to meet some more of the team! Specifically you'll have a cross-functional interview where you'll meet:

   1. Someone from the People function who might have some questions about interacting with the People team and how to build a successful relationship across functions.

   2. Some more time with Mike, covering interaction with the broader org and getting a better idea for team fit.

5. As a final step, you'll have a chance to meet with Abhik who will be completing a final appraisal of your fit for the the role. This is also a great opportunity to answer any burning questions you might have about Ashby from someone with all of the context!

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.

Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.