Saturday, August 20, 2011

Rally Software - Systems Engineer

Rally Software Development is the industry leader, providing knowledge, coaching and tooling for companies to succeed with Agile. We were named the Best Company to Work For in Colorado for the last four years, and ranked a top ten Best Places to Work in the U.S. from Outside Magazine. Our product has won numerous awards and was recently recognized by industry analyst Forester Research which wrote that Rally "offers the best current balance of product capability and strategic outlook." As of early 2011, Rally is proud to serve 9,700 companies and 112,000 users across 101 countries.

Rally software is seeking a motivated individual with a passion for performance, metrics and trail-blazing our operations analysis. The Systems Engineering group is responsible for providing information to the rest of the company about the health and use of the production system, readiness of releases and the configuration and impact of new architectural components. We support the development process by continually validating the performance and scalability of Rally's SaaS Agile Life-cycle Management tool.


We work closely with developers and operations to provide feedback on the state of the release and validate the performance of proposed architecture related changes. Our load and performance system is a combination of JMeter, a custom load-generation framework and a Ruby/Rails data warehousing application running on top of a multi-terabyte database.

What you will be doing:

-Utilize existing tools and techniques, as well as develop new ones as needed, to analyze system performance. -Analyze data and synthesize conclusions into recommendations for product and engineering improvements and further study. -Accumulate results of all tests and production access into a data warehouse-Develop analysis tools for developers to access system data quickly and effectively
-Work with product management to understand important use cases, overall product dynamics, product usage, and uncover potential improvements.
-Contribute to the body of knowledge by proactively identifying areas for further investigation as well as innovating the methods with which to analyze/understand them.
-Implement a performance and scalability testing methodology and recommend / develop test tools to execute performance and scalability tests.
-Isolate application and architectural issues and recommend resolutions to development.
-Provide internal and external customer documentation summarizing results of performance and scalability tests.


Qualifications:

We are looking for a unique balance of OO developer, SQL developer, and performance engineer with the following experience:

-You have produced working software (with tests) in at least one object oriented language. Ruby and Java experience a plus.
-You have SQL database development experience; writing stored procedures and complex queries. Postgres and data warehouse experience a plus.
-You have load tested web applications and have working knowledge of TCP/IP, HTTP, Load Balancers, Apache/IIS etc.
-You are comfortable at the Unix command line and have experience writing shell scripts.

Rally seeks people who are passionate about the software industry. We value teamwork and the ability to make and meet commitments as well as skill and a successful track record. We strive for a healthy, productive work/life balance, while enjoying the opportunity to substantially contribute to the direction and success of a vibrant software business. Rally offers excellent compensation, benefits, and stock options with an exceptional opportunity to grow.