System Administrator

Web Hosting Canada (WHC); Montreal (administrative region); On-site; CAD 80,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Group insurance

Telemedicine

Employee assistance program

Job summary

Web Hosting Canada (WHC) is seeking a System Administrator to act as the senior escalation point for secure, fast, and reliable hosting environments. You will own incidents end to end, troubleshoot complex client environments, and coach our L1 and L2 teams through advanced technical cases.

This hands-on role has real influence over how our infrastructure scales. You will strengthen monitoring, automate repetitive work, harden backup and recovery, and standardize aging systems.

Qualifications

• 5+ years Linux system administration in a production hosting environment.
• Hands-on experience with cPanel/WHM and DNS management.
• Strong security, backup, and DR practices with monitoring and incident response.
• Experience with firewalling and WAFs; ability to coach juniors on complex cases.

Responsibilities

• Monitor production infrastructure and respond to incidents in real time.
• Diagnose performance issues including load balancing and DB tuning.
• Manage security incidents, malware, abuse, and reputation concerns.
• Provision, configure, and decommission servers (dedicated and cloud).
• Own backup, restore, and disaster recovery operations; verify effectiveness.
• Lead patching and OS lifecycle across the fleet; drive automation.
• Mentor L1/L2 teams on advanced technical cases and migrations.

Skills

Linux administration

LAMP stacks

cPanel/WHM

DNS & IPv4/IPv6

Email systems

MySQL/MariaDB

Bash/CLI

Backup & restore

Firewalls/WAFs

English or French

On-call rotation

Tools

Docker

Git

Ansible/Terraform

Plesk

Virtualization (KVM/Proxmox/VMware)

Job description

The Opportunity

As a System Administrator, you are the senior escalation point for everything that keeps WHC’s hosting environments secure, fast, and reliable. Reporting to our Lead System Administrator, you own critical incidents end to end, untangle the complex client environments nobody else can crack, and coach our L1 and L2 teams through advanced technical cases.

This is a hands-on role with real influence over how our infrastructure scales. You will strengthen monitoring, automate the work that should not be manual, harden our backup and recovery posture, and help standardize systems that have grown organically over many years. If you like being the person others escalates to, and you would rather fix the underlying cause than close the ticket, you will fit here.

What You’ll Do

• Monitor production infrastructure and respond to incidents in real time
• Diagnose and resolve complex performance issues, including load balancing, database optimization, and system tuning
• Identify and remediate security incidents such as malware, phishing, abuse, and blacklisting
• Provision, configure, and decommission dedicated and cloud servers
• Own backup, restore, and disaster recovery operations, and verify that they actually work
• Manage patching and operating system lifecycle across the fleet
• Lead complex customer migrations and performance audits
• Coach and guide our L1 and L2 support teams through advanced technical cases
• Work with external vendors to troubleshoot hardware and software issues
• Improve monitoring, alerting, and automation so that fewer problems become incidents
• Escalate platform-level issues to DevOps and coordinate the response
• Contribute to internal documentation and systems standardization

What You Bring

• 5+ years administering Linux systems running LAMP stacks (Apache or Nginx)
• Hands-on experience with cPanel/WHM in a production hosting environment
• Strong knowledge of DNS, IPv4/IPv6, and core web technologies
• Experience with email systems (SMTP, POP, IMAP), deliverability, and reputation management
• Database administration experience with MySQL or MariaDB
• Comfort with Bash and the command line
• Experience with backup and restore tooling, and with monitoring and alerting platforms
• Working knowledge of firewalls and web application firewalls (CSF, ModSecurity, Cloudflare, or similar)
• Strong written and verbal communication in English or French
• Willingness to take part in a shared on-call rotation

Nice to Have

• Plesk
• CloudLinux, LiteSpeed, or Imunify360
• WordPress performance and security tuning at scale
• Scripting in Python, PHP, or Perl
• Virtualization platforms such as KVM, Proxmox, VMware, or OpenStack
• Configuration management or infrastructure as code (Ansible, Terraform)
• Git for configuration and change management
• Containers (Docker)
• Windows Server
• Certifications such as LPIC, Red Hat, or cPanel

Why Join WHC?

• Hybrid: 1 to 2 days a week at our Montreal office, the rest from home
• Group insurance, telemedicine, and an employee assistance program
• A shared on-call rotation with a named backup each week, compensated in line with WHC policy
• Real technical ownership and a direct line to the people making infrastructure decisions
• A team that lives its values

Equal Opportunity

WHC is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to an inclusive environment for all WHCers. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, and we are happy to accommodate candidates with disabilities at any stage of the process. Just let us know what you need.