cat recruiters.md

For recruiters.

Enough here to work out in a minute whether we should talk: the shape of role that fits, the stack I want to be in, and what I'd rather not go back to. Read it before mailing and you'll get a proper reply.

looking● open

emailopportunities@…

locationStockport, UK

# brief

level: Head of / Principal / Staff. Leading a telephony or infrastructure function, hands still on the keyboard.
domain: Voice and carrier infrastructure, network architecture, the reliability side of both. Fifteen years of it; see /employment.
the work: Designing the system, not inheriting one to keep patched. I do my best work owning the architecture from the ground up, or taking something small and rebuilding it properly with the mandate to do so. I'll happily inherit an estate and redesign it. I'm less interested in a job that is mostly maintaining someone else's decisions.
shape: Permanent. Not currently looking at contract or interim.
location: Remote. I'm in Stockport and will travel for the things worth travelling for. No relocation, and no full-time desk in an office. See below.
company: Smaller and mid-size over corporate. Somewhere the voice stack matters to the business rather than being someone else's problem.
money: Please include the actual band in your first email. “Competitive” and “DOE” just cost us both a round-trip.

01 / WANT

● what I want to build

SIP · Asterisk · Kamailio · OpenSIPS
WebRTC & media path
Carrier interconnect, SS7/GSM edges
Linux, bare-metal and VPS (Hetzner, Linode, DO)
PHP · Laravel · modern MVC
Python
Observability and on-call done properly

The core of the job. If the role is mostly this, I'm interested.

02 / FINE

▲ fine in the estate

Teams & O365 voice integration
Kubernetes, where it earns its keep
Cisco · Fortinet · Juniper kit
Some JavaScript at the edges
Google Workspace

I work with all of this today. Happy for it to be in the stack, less happy for it to be the whole job.

03 / NOT FOR ME

✕ not for me

Cloud-first shops: AWS · Azure · GCP
Front-end or JS-first roles
Java or Perl as the primary language
Windows-centric infrastructure

I've run production on the hyperscalers and still do where a job demands it. I'd rather not sign up for more of it: they generate more operational work than they remove, and they tend to stand in for actually understanding the infrastructure underneath. Give me tin and a VPS and I'll give you better uptime for less money.

Aggregated skillset

# 102 entries pulled from every role on /employment

802.11 technologiesamqpandroidasset managementasteriskbashbgpbind9bootstrapcachescapistranocaptive portalscarpcarrier relationscompliancecontainerisationcroncss3datacentre managementdebiandhcpdisaster planningdisaster recoverydistributed infrastructurednsdockereigrpelasticsearchfirewallsfossfront of housegitgithubhipaahtml5hypervisorsimapinterconnectsipv4ipv6iso22301iso27001iso9001kamailiokubernetesldapleadershiplinuxload balancersmail serversmanagementmembershipmemcachedmifidmplsmysqlnetwork capacity planningnetwork infrastructurenetwork managementnetworkingnoc operationsopensipsospfpbxpci dssphpphp5php7point-of-salepostgresqlpresentationproxmoxrabbitmqradiusredisretailrfc3261rfc7519rtpsalesserver managementsipssmtpsource controlsplit-horizon dnssrtpsshstock controlstockingstripeteam buildingteam managementtelecommunicationsvirtualisationvlanvmwareweb application firewallsweb serverswireguardwireless mesh infrastructurewireless network infrastructurewss

# 11 more I've shipped with but am not looking to go back to

active directoryawsgcpgoogle cloud platformgroup policyiisjavajavascriptmicrosoft officenodejswindows

# remote Worth being blunt about this, because it is usually the thing that decides whether a role works. I work remotely, and I do my best work that way. I launched RocketCell, a UK MVNO running on EE's network, from the desk in my study, largely in my pyjamas. The SIP carrier infrastructure underneath RocketPhone was built at the same desk, and a good deal of my best work over the last fifteen years has been done there too.

So this isn't a preference I'm asking anyone to indulge. There is a decade and a half of shipped infrastructure behind it. Real engineering needs long uninterrupted stretches, and an open-plan office is exceptionally good at turning those into someone mithering you about something that could have been a message. I'd rather spend the day on the problem than on being seen to be present.

None of which makes me a hermit. I'm on the calls, I run the team, and I'll happily travel for onboarding, workshops, incidents and the occasional day with a carrier or a customer. I just don't need a commute in order to do any of it.