Senior Systems Administrator, Tovala
$120-140k
+ Equity
Office located in W Adams St, Chicago
Smart ovens and meal-kit delivery service
Be an early applicant
Smart ovens and meal-kit delivery service
101-200 employees
Be an early applicant
$120-140k
+ Equity
Office located in W Adams St, Chicago
101-200 employees
Company mission
To make home cooking faster, healthier, and easier so people can focus on what's most important to them.
Role
Who you are
- 7+ years of experience administering corporate IT environments in a Systems Administrator, Senior Systems Administrator, or similar role
- Experience supporting macOS, Linux, and Windows endpoints at scale, including MDM, patch management, endpoint security, and device lifecycle management
- Hands-on experience administering on-prem Linux servers (Ubuntu/Debian), including CLI, shell scripting, networking, hardening, and infrastructure automation/CI/CD
- Experience evaluating, selecting, implementing, and administering IT platforms, rather than only operating established tooling
- Strong networking experience across firewalls, switches, wireless, VPNs, and office connectivity; Ubiquiti/UniFi experience strongly preferred
- Experience administering Google Workspace or similar identity platforms, with knowledge of IAM, email security, EDR/XDR, and security best practices
- Experience responding to endpoint security incidents and partnering on broader security initiatives
- Strong troubleshooting skills across hardware, operating systems, networking, identity, and SaaS, with a customer-first approach to employee IT support
- Experience managing technology vendors and technical purchasing decisions, with the organizational skills to balance day-to-day support and longer-term infrastructure projects
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to build trust with employees and explain technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences
What the job involves
- As our Senior Systems Administrator, you'll play a foundational role in shaping and operating Tovala's internal IT environment
- You'll own the systems, tools, and processes that keep our employees productive, secure, and connected, while helping us build a scalable, modern IT function that supports a growing business
- This is a highly hands-on individual contributor role for someone who enjoys solving a wide variety of technical challenges—from helping an employee troubleshoot a laptop issue to designing endpoint management standards, administering network infrastructure, evaluating new tools, and strengthening our security posture
- You'll have significant ownership over the direction of our corporate IT environment and partner closely with Engineering leadership to make thoughtful decisions about the systems and technologies that support our teams
- This is a contract-to-hire opportunity
- We're looking for someone who can establish the right technical foundation and operational maturity to support Tovala's long-term IT strategy, with the opportunity to transition into a full-time role as those capabilities are established
- Serve as the primary point of contact for employee IT support, resolving a wide range of hardware, software, networking, and account issues while delivering an outstanding support experience
- Administer and maintain our corporate endpoint environment across macOS, iOS, Windows and Linux devices, ensuring systems remain secure, compliant, and up to date
- Evaluate, select, implement, and operate modern endpoint management, device management, endpoint detection and response (EDR/XDR), patch management, and related IT administration tools
- Develop scalable processes for device provisioning, inventory management, onboarding, offboarding, lifecycle management, and hardware refreshes
- Own administration of Tovala's corporate network infrastructure, including Ubiquiti switches, wireless networks, firewalls, VPN technologies, conferencing equipment, and connectivity across multiple office locations
- Partner with Engineering leadership to plan network improvements, evaluate vendors, and evolve our IT infrastructure as the company grows
- Own our endpoint security program, including endpoint protection, incident response, security monitoring, and remediation of endpoint-related threats
- Manage Google Workspace administration, identity management, email security, and secure access to company systems
- Administer our identity and access management tools and evolve our practices to improve security and employee experience
- Manage relationships with IT vendors and technology partners, helping evaluate products, negotiate renewals, and ensure we're getting the most value from our investments
- Create clear documentation and standard operating procedures that improve consistency and enable future growth
- Partner with Engineering leadership on broader cybersecurity initiatives, infrastructure planning, and long-term IT strategy
- Continuously identify opportunities to improve reliability, security, automation, and the overall employee technology experience
- Administer and maintain on-premises Linux servers — provisioning, patching, hardening, monitoring, backups, and troubleshooting — to keep internal infrastructure reliable and secure
- Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines used to deploy and manage internal systems, automating builds, testing, and releases to increase reliability and reduce manual work
Our take
Domestic meal kits are nothing new, with companies such as Hello Fresh, Sun Basket, and Blue Apron all crowding the increasingly popular industry. Tovala is a food-tech company attempting to disrupt this market, with a smart oven that eliminates the need for meal preparation.
Tovala offers customers both an oven and the option to sign up to a rotating weekly meal delivery service. Boasting a single minute of prep-time for adding the final touches, the system works by scanning the meal's QR code so that the oven can run the associated cook cycle. The oven also recognizes over a thousand name-brand products, and has hundreds of presets for when users want to cook for themselves.
Despite competing with a pile of other meal-kit services, Tovala's clear stand-out feature is the oven, with nothing similar offered by competitors. The company has served more than 45M meals and is now expanding with the recent announcement of a new food processing facility in Winfield, Illinois. This new facility will provide even more capacity to serve the company's growing customer base.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Feb 2021
$30m
SERIES C
Sep 2020
$3m
LATE VC
Total funding: $71.8m
Company HQ
West Loop, Chicago, IL
Leadership
David Rabie
(Founder & CEO)Prior to founding Tovala in 2014, David co-founded Draftpedia. He also served as the COO at Groovy Spoon Frozen Yogurt and as an Associate at The Abernathy MacGregor Group.
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