Do you want to be part of empowering Movements and Activists via an organizing app based on Matrix.org? Do you have experience hosting Matrix servers and managing mid-sized organization hosting environments with Ansible? Can you troubleshoot and improve that infrastructure with additional services, or even build some yourself when needed? And do you enjoy helping clients get the most out of a Matrix-based app, as well as supporting users when they face technical issues? Then this opportunity is for you!

Acter is looking for someone with an engineering mindset to lead DevOps and Technical Support.

🌟 Acter is on a mission to amplify the power of civil society by enabling more secure and effective organizing for Activists, Movements and Human Rights Defenders around the world, meet some of them here: https://youtu.be/ZesrOD9NzgI. To succeed in this mission, we're seeking a dedicated individual to lead our internal infrastructure (DevOps and SysOps) and client technical support efforts.

You’ll work closely with our CTO, Benjamin Kampmann, to maintain and improve the existing Ansible-based Matrix-hosting infrastructure, manage our back-office systems, and introduce future services for additional monitoring and upcoming product features. Additionally, you will collaborate with the community growth team to help end users troubleshoot issues and build resilient processes so the team can take on more of these tasks themselves.

Responsibilities:

In collaboration and coordination with the CTO, your key responsibilities will include:

🏗️ DevOps and SysOps Admin:

• Maintain server infrastructure using existing Ansible recipes.

• Improve infrastructure monitoring, particularly around end-to-end product reliability.

• Add services to the stack to support product growth.

• Over time, take the lead on infrastructure upgrades based on product, user, and internal demands.

💬 Community Support:

• Serve as the primary technical contact for the community when issues arise.

• Assist the community growth team with technical expertise, particularly when engaging users or potential partners.

• Collaborate with the community growth team to improve their processes, especially around technical support.

🙌 You’re a great fit if you:

• Communicate clearly and effectively.

• Have a strong sense of empathy and curiosity, driven by a genuine desire to understand and meet user needs.

• Thrive on optimizing processes and making continuous improvements.

• Possess an entrepreneurial spirit and are willing to experiment and learn from failures.

• Can be self driven, navigating uncertainty and complexity, bringing clarity and direction to your work.

➕ Bonus points if you:

• Have deep knowledge of Matrix.

• Have experience hosting Matrix servers, particularly using Spantaleev’s Ansible Matrix deploy scripts.

• Are experienced with Ansible and Docker hosting.

• Have coding experience and want to improve your skills.

• Have been or are an activist, or have experience in community building or volunteering.

🧚 What we offer:

• A remote-first, increasingly asynchronous workplace with a high level of autonomy over your schedule (some overlap with GMT time for occasional meetings is required).

• A user-focused product and a fast-paced, startup-like work environment for a genuinely meaningful cause, with no profit motive influencing our mission (we are a worker-driven NGO).

• As part of a small, dedicated team, you’ll have significant influence over strategy and freedom in your day-to-day work.

• Fair, cost-of-living-oriented compensation (above market rate if you live in a lower-cost-of-living location).

Please apply if you’re excited about this opportunity, even if not all the criteria perfectly apply to you! We are looking for someone who can lead as much of this work as possible, and for any gaps, we can find ways to adapt. The application is open-ended. We are looking to fill this position as quickly as we can and thus will close applications if we have found a fitting candidate.

Agencies and recruiters may not apply, we are only working with individuals directly.