Linux/OpenWRT System Engineer

Hybrid: From home and our office at Amsterdam Central Station

Salary: Between 50.000 to 64.000 EUR (including allowances plus excellent secondary benefits - see below)

Full-time: 37.5 hours per week (working part-time is also possible) 

IMPORTANT: You should be living in the Netherlands 

As our new Systems Engineer, you’ll be working on the firmware development of RIPE Atlas probes as a member of our RIPE Atlas development team - a pretty unique task! Do you have experience in this area, and are you eager to learn and share knowledge with a highly collaborative, multinational team? Then the RIPE NCC is the place for you!

RIPE Atlas is a collaborative, active Internet measurement platform built and operated by the RIPE NCC. It relies on about 14,000 vantage points (which we call probes) that are hosted by volunteers spread all across the globe measuring the network and sharing their findings. These measurements include DNS queries, traceroutes, pings, NTP, HTTP and other data.

The firmware of these probes is written mainly in C (with an appropriate level of scripting thrown in) and is available as open source. It is built using tools such as libevent and BusyBox. It runs mostly on OpenWRT or Oracle Linux, but it is available as packages for RHEL, Debian and other OSes as well. As of today, the majority of our probes run on small, dedicated hardware devices, while the rest run as software packages. The security and stability of the firmware code running on these devices are essential to the system.

🧠 In this role, you will:

• Manage the maintenance and release process of the RIPE Atlas probe firmware and software package for various Linux-based operating systems

• Maintain and enhance the firmware, for example by working on new types of measurements or new features of existing ones

• Make sure that the firmware code is safe and sound

• Explore the use of potential new hardware devices to run the firmware on

• Depending on experience: be involved in, or collaborate with the infrastructure operators, and back-end developers (and perhaps support the front-end work too!) using your ideas, skills and code

• Be involved in design- and architecture decisions for the future of the codebase.

👀 What We're Looking For:

• Linux administration experience, ideally on OpenWRT on routers, small devices, etc.; knowledge of RHEL, Debian or other Linux distributions is a plus

• Good understanding of basic networking protocols such as DHCP, IP, TCP, UDP, TLS/SSL, HTTP and DNS

• Understanding of C code for networking applications and scripting languages (e.g. shell, Python) around them

• Good command of English, both written and spoken

• Ability to carry out tasks individually as well as work in a team

It would be nice if you also have:

• Hands-on electronics knowledge

• RedHat and/or Debian packaging experience

📢What You Can Expect From Us:

Part of our pay policy is that we offer attractive total remuneration. While some companies may offer higher base salaries, at the RIPE NCC we take pride in offering outstanding secondary benefits that truly set us apart. Beyond the tangible perks, you’ll also gain the invaluable reward of working for a mission-driven organisation—where your contributions have a real and lasting impact on the Internet and the internet community we serve. 

We offer:

• A modern, flexible and informal work environment in the heart of Amsterdam, with an emphasis on a healthy work/life balance

• A hybrid working policy under which you can combine working from the office with working from home. Working from abroad for a number of days per year is also possible.

• 30 vacation days, plus three collective days, plus public holidays

• A gross health insurance compensation for you and, if applicable, your partner, and your children under 21 years old. This means that RIPE NCC pays the largest part of your health insurance; you will only pay the taxes. 

• An excellent non-contributory pension scheme. We pay for the whole premium, while most of the organisations in the Netherlands ask the employee for some contribution

• A generous education budget of €2,250 per year so you can keep learning and developing your skills

• Dutch language lessons for international colleagues. If we relocate you with your partner, we also offer this for your partner 

• An annual health budget of €750 gross that you can spend on sport classes, a mindfulness course, a chair massage, etc.

• An annual budget of €1,600 gross for your Internet connectivity and technology at home

• When travelling with public transport, your transportation costs will be covered by a first-class train ticket to our Amsterdam office and/or KM allowance

• An additional annual transportation budget of €500 gross that you can use on a bike or GVB card, for example

• A sport hour per week for doing sports or fitness during work hours

• A home office furniture budget for a healthy, ARBO-proof work setup at home

• An organisation-wide internal training programme designed to develop critical soft skills—like feedback, resilience and leadership—giving you the tools to excel in your career and beyond

• An in-house free barista providing healthy varied lunches on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and nice breakfasts on Thursdays, plus monthly office social events

• Casual team events such as team outings, an annual Christmas party and a summer BBQ 

👥The Internet Measurements Department

We are a vibrant team of 17 talented, diverse, multicultural engineers who love working for the good of the Internet and are eager to learn from each other and evolve our skills through collaboration. You will mainly be working and interacting with about ten colleagues. We value best practices, such as clean coding, code reviews, automated tests, continuous integration (CI), and few-click deployments. As in a proper Agile environment, we work as a team, and we rely on good communication.

🛜About The RIPE NCC

The RIPE NCC is a not-for-profit organisation founded on the belief that the Internet should be governed openly, transparently and together with the wider Internet community. We are one of the oldest Internet organisations in Europe and are proud of our legacy.

Our strength is our staff. We bring together more than 180+ people from over 44 countries in our modern, vibrant office in the east wing of Amsterdam Central Station. Currently, we have a hybrid way of working and allow our staff to work from their homes and the office. Our official working language is English, but our colleagues speak more than 30 languages.

Our backgrounds are diverse, but our goal is the same: we work for the good of the Internet. Will you join us?

📋How To Apply

If interested, please click the ‘Apply’ button and submit your CV and cover letter in English. Adding a cover letter is highly important and appreciated, our team read them carefully. 

Not ready to apply yet? Then send me an email to openings@ripe.net and we can have an informal chat.

At the RIPE NCC, we are proud to serve our members and the RIPE community in 76 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. We celebrate unique perspectives and talents from different backgrounds and cultures. So if you're passionate about what you do and want to help shape the future of the Internet, apply now - we'd love to hear your story. 

Please note that due to the nature of our activities, we will require successful candidates to follow a pre-employment screening (conducted by our partner DISA). This involves carrying out a background check and sharing education certificates.