Senior Systems Engineer (Storage)

Flying Bark Productions is a dynamic and innovative animation studio dedicated to pushing the boundaries of character animation and storytelling. We are working on exciting projects such as Avatar: The Last Airbender feature film, Netflix's Stranger Things animated series, as well as our production Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. 

The Senior Systems Engineer is a highly proactive, hands-on role responsible for managing and maintaining the IT and systems administration requirements of our creative studio. As a strong generalist with a deep specialisation in storage, you will manage a complex, heavily on-premises environment utilising a mix of products. A key objective of this role is to support and evaluate our current infrastructure and drive initiatives to modernise, streamline and simplify our storage and systems landscape. You will be a core part of the technology team, ensuring our production teams can deliver exceptional work without technical roadblocks.

This role encompasses the end-to-end management of core infrastructure, with a particular focus on enterprise storage (SAN, NAS, fibre switching, cloud storage, etc) to support our data-heavy creative pipelines. You will balance the needs of fast-paced production teams with rigorous client security constraints (TPN/MPAA).

As a strong generalist with storage specialisation, you will be part of a small team of Systems Engineers supporting on-premises infrastructure, encompassing both ticket-based support and project delivery. You will champion a collaborative, "can-do" culture, taking ownership of technical challenges, sharing knowledge through documentation and proactively building relationships across the studio. "That's not my job" is not in your vocabulary.

About the role:

Storage & Data Management

• Own the administration, monitoring and maintenance of our enterprise storage platforms (SAN/NAS high-capacity clusters, fibre channel fabrics, SMB/NFS shares, DFS, ZFS, TrueNAS, Cumulus), including performance and capacity monitoring, snapshots and replication, access group management, and firmware/lifecycle updates.
• Manage archive and restoration workflows (Bacula + LTO8 tape library), ensuring data integrity, tested restores and appropriate retention across productions.
• Evaluate our heterogeneous, multi-vendor storage and systems landscape and provide input that helps drive initiatives to modernise, consolidate and simplify it, providing recommendations and roadmaps to the Platforms & Infrastructure Technical Lead.

Core Infrastructure & Support

• Manage, monitor and maintain core infrastructure including Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, on-premises virtualisation (Proxmox/Hyper-V) and supporting public cloud services.
• Provide hands-on systems administration and technical support to artists and staff in their production tasks; monitor and respond to the ticket queue, and proactively identify patterns of incidents to resolve underlying root causes.
• Maintain the health, security and performance of the network.
• Build new hardware and install/deploy software as required.
• Script and automate repetitive administrative processes (PowerShell, bash ,ec) and assist in troubleshooting issues with existing production pipeline tools.
  
  

Security & Compliance

• Balance the needs of production teams while working within agreed client security constraints (TPN/MPAA); understand, maintain and implement security policies and controls in line with standards such as ISM and AS/NZS ISO/IEC 2700X where applicable..

Collaboration & Ownership

• Take end-to-end ownership of technical challenges, seeing problems through to resolution rather than handing them off.
• Proactively build relationships with production, technical and creative crew to understand their workflows and anticipate their needs.
• Liaise with third-party vendors to resolve technical issues and advocate for new functionality where required.
• Identify issues with workflow, technology and development methodologies, and communicate them effectively to production, pipeline and technology teams.
• Create and maintain clear documentation, share knowledge generously, and provide technical guidance and mentoring to other engineers on the team.
  

About you:

Experience

• 5+ years in senior systems engineering/administration roles within medium to large enterprises, including substantial hands-on responsibility for enterprise storage in a complex, multi-vendor environment.

Enterprise Storage

• Deep expertise with SAN/NAS high-capacity clusters, fibre channel switching, and SMB/NFS shares for cross-platform workflows, across products such as Cumulus, TrueNAS, DFS, ZFS and Editshare. Experience with archiving/restoration technologies (Bacula + LTO8 tapes), snapshots and replication, access group management, firmware maintenance and updates, and performance/capacity monitoring.

Systems Administration

• Strong background managing both Windows and Linux server environments. Windows: Active Directory (user/computer objects, security groups), Group Policy, DNS and DHCP. Linux: proficiency navigating and managing systems via the CLI, understanding of system internals, and package management, software installation and configuration.

Networking & Security

• Experience provisioning core and access switches (e.g. Cisco, Dell), managing VLANs, subnets and network protocols, and administering firewalls and VPN (Palo Alto). Experience understanding, maintaining and implementing security policies, and working to well-defined standards such as ISM, AS/NZS ISO/IEC 2700X and TPN. Cisco certification highly regarded.

Virtualisation

• Experience deploying and managing public cloud and on-premises virtualisation technologies (e.g. Proxmox, Hyper-V), including deploying virtual machines, maintaining and testing VM backups, monitoring performance and resource utilisation, and troubleshooting errors.

Scripting & Automation

• Ability to script and automate administrative processes and troubleshoot production pipeline issues using languages such as Python, Bash and PowerShell. Familiarity with DevOps principles such as version control, infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD is an advantage.

Creative Studio / Post-Production Experience (highly regarded)

• Familiarity with VFX/post-production workflows and application support for tools such as Autodesk Maya, Foundry Nuke, render management (Pixar Tractor), Adobe Suite, Avid Media Composer and Arnold.

Key Measures of Success

• Ability to work and manage multiple priorities in a face paced environment.
• Liaising with production staff and technical and creative crew to gather requirements and rapidly provide solutions that meet the needs of productions and the Company.
• Stable, performant and secure storage and infrastructure platforms, with capacity and performance risks flagged well before they impact productions.
• Demonstrable progress on modernisation and simplification initiatives across the storage and systems landscape.
• Working cohesively as part of the technology team, ensuring transparency in reporting and communication within the team, IT and the organisation as a whole.
• Establishing successful working relationships with key members of production and crew.
• Working autonomously while maintaining high levels of communication with the team and key stakeholders.
• Being adaptable, flexible and responsive to change, and completing tasks within production deadlines.

What do we do?

Flying Bark Productions is a renowned independent producer of family-focused animation entertainment. For over 50 years, our 2D and 3D production facility has created award-winning feature films and TV series.

Why work with us?

• We work on some pretty cool projects - check out our website: https://www.flyingbark.com.au/
• We have an industry leading studio space in Alexandria, complete with a cinema, quiet room, Zen Garden, games room, and state of the art animation facilities.
• Breakfast is served daily - on us!
• We have cake days, movie nights, wrap parties & a culture club dedicated to coordinating our busy social calendar!
• The Barkers have big hearts too, with our Paws for a Cause fundraising arm raising much needed funds for charities such as Beyond Blue, RSPCA and the Cancer Council.
• We love dogs and you will often see some of our regular fluffy companions in the studio.
• We have a hybrid approach to work with flexible work from home days on offer.
• Career development is important to us so we offer training and support opportunities whenever possible.
• Our employees say our culture is the best they've ever experienced - everyone is welcome and celebrated!
• You'll have access to mental health resources and free counselling via our Employee Assistance Provider, Support Act.

Flying Bark Productions is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.