What is the best strategy to land a FreeBSD job?

[Holger]

Background: I would like to switch my professional environment (software development) from Linux to FreeBSD. My goal is to gain experience on how FreeBSD is professionally used, e.g., in some product. Coming from an Embedded-Linux background, I know there is much hidden, low-level stuff going on once you decide to put a Unix-like operating system into a product.

However, when searching for FreeBSD-specific jobs I usually get SysAdmin hits or tough stuff like hardcore kernel development.

What are the best “filters” to grab a job, which is about software development on/with FreeBSD, but without going these two extremes? How can you get there?

I am currently starting getting active on social media channels like LinkedIn, etc. setting the respective tags (“freebsd” and such).

Two questions in that regard:

1. Is it reasonable going to LinkedIn and hoping for getting a FreeBSD-job?
2. Is there a better way generally?

 

[Geezer]

1.) Never used it.
2.) Get a job (or fixed length contract), and when you have started, gently suggest that Freebsd is a better choice than what they currently use.

 

[unitrunker]

The best strategy is the "WhatsApp" strategy.

Start your own company with software on FreeBSD.

 

[Phishfry]

Beckhoff is a FreeBSD house with German presence. I would start there.

Job opportunities

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Engineers (m/f/x) – Software development

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[xk2600]

Get a job (or fixed length contract), and when you have started, gently suggest that Freebsd is a better choice than what they currently use.

This ... ... is how I introduced FreeBSD at 3 different companies... couldn't tell you if they're still actively deploying it there, but I bet there are more than a few aging installs that are running. ?

 

[vermaden]

2.) Get a job (or fixed length contract), and when you have started, gently suggest that FreeBSD is a better choice than what they currently use.

In ecosystems when you have some influence about what is being used and implemented - this works. In 'dump' corporations that always do the 'RHEL/SLES/AIX' way it will not work. Keep that in mind.

I would 'SPAM' companies I know that support/use FreeBSD with my CV. Asking if they do not seek a person with skills I have - or maybe even something below you current experience/possibilities. Once you are in a such company - it may be possible to 'level up'. At least you will achieve your goal - of working with FreeBSD.

There are (very few) work/job opportunities listed on 'seek work' portals - but maybe you will find something there?

Hope that helps.

1. Is it reasonable going to LinkedIn and hoping for getting a FreeBSD-job?

"Can't hurt your chances." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr7Piwe0_QQ

 

[drhowarddrfine]

There are (very few) work/job opportunities listed on 'seek work' portals - but maybe you will find something there?

I have seen quite a number on such portals. I even applied to a couple and got a phone interview with one. I mentioned it here on the forum maybe a year ago.

 

[Lamia]

Several products use FreeBSD as their underlying technology (stack). Examples are *Sense MacOS(at least Darwin BSD or Unix). Mention these products because that is what employers are conversant with. And you really need comprehend how Unix/*BSD works.

You also should include other OS projects and products based on them e.g. Voice services (FreePBX Asterisk/CentOS); Network services (Openwrt), etc. Basically, you want to be an OS evangelist with greater interest in FreeBSD as an OS.

You finally should spam businesses with your resume; FreeBSD jobs are almost non-existent. Of course, it gets mentioned in JD.

 

[BaronBS]

1.) Never used it.
2.) Get a job (or fixed length contract), and when you have started, gently suggest that Freebsd is a better choice than what they currently use.

I'm doing that right now.

I recently start as a IT Support Technician in a AV Production and System Integration company. And on my second day on the job I got a bunch of BSOD's on almost all workstations of the company.

Me and my supervisor are without a break for almost a month (no weekends) because of that.

My plan is to convince my supervisor to virtualize all workstations with FBSD and Bhyve on one of ours servers. We need to upgrade all workstations anyway (mostly are pre 2013). The greatest thing with this setup is that instead of upgrade all workstations for some hardware that support win11, we can use a bunch of cheap intel micro computer instead. ;-)

 

[Deleted member 43773]

Is it reasonable going to LinkedIn and hoping for getting a FreeBSD-job?

I had my profile on several online employment websites and "professional social network" sites for over 15 years.
Never even got a single contact inquiry, not to mention job offers.
By my experience not a way, no chance to get any job this way.

By my experience you always need to become active yourself.

 

[kpedersen]

2.) Get a job (or fixed length contract), and when you have started, gently suggest that Freebsd is a better choice than what they currently use.

Indeed. Start as a normal employee and then shoehorn FreeBSD wherever you can!

A long time ago, I started at a multimedia studio managing their build servers. I pushed FreeBSD as solution because it could build binaries for FreeBSD (native) Linux (linuxemu), Windows (Wine), macOS (VirtualBox), Web (Emscripten) all on one machine. Of course FreeBSD as a build target itself was not very useful (The studio / customers were mainly a Windows house) so Linux could achieve just as much but the ZFS snapshots and Jails did add more ammunition (though I didn't end up using them, chroot was good enough).

 

[wolffnx]

I work since 15 years for a gubenarmental place, when I started it was a Linux firewall,nothing more
with the years I migrate it to FreeBSD
then one guy come up with the virtualization thing,
horrible...horrible solutions, ubuntu servers with KVM, full of process,the servers from time to time hangs up,
runs really slow and all HP proliant servers with enough RAM an CPU
well, slow and sure I started to migrate to FreeBSD and Virtualbox, and runs like hell
and like that everything new project I choose FreeBSD, today I have 7 servers with FreeBSD on it

so,you make the diference, sometimes(if you are lucky) the servers to administrate already are FreeBSD
but if not..analize,make a plan,wait for the moment and start making your own plan
if you got a Linux job ok....with the time you can change the things

 

[patmaddox]

I can +100 the suggestion to try to introduce FreeBSD at your current job, assuming you like your current job (or would like it it if you were using FreeBSD).

That's the spot I'm in... our team inherited a handful of apps deployed via Docker images on AWS ECS. We found it to be extraordinarily complex (and still way simpler than Kubernetes), with bizarre things like CloudWatch logs not showing certain lines until you search for them - so we didn't trust them. Diagnosing issues was a PITA because each service ran a different Linux distro, some were stripped down without basic diagnostic tools, etc.

I talked with my boss about the possibility of experimenting with FreeBSD for deployments. We put it on the TODO list... and I realized there were too many open questions for it to ever get to the top of the list any time soon. So I worked on figuring a bunch of that stuff out on my own, after work or on weekends. Eventually I got it to a point where I felt I was within striking distance of a proof-of-concept deployment, pitched it to him, and he said yes. It was solid enough that the work moved high up the TODO list.

We deployed our first production FreeBSD system a few months ago, have introduced a couple other ones since, and our general sense is new systems will be on FreeBSD unless there are specific constraints preventing it. I'm way happier with these deployments than I was with our ECS-based systems, and I sleep better at night.

---

The other approach, finding a new job - you probably have to go to them, they're unlikely to come looking for you.

"Look for people you can help, and reach out to them" is a solid strategy in general. The way people start coming to you is when you regularly demonstrate your usefulness while asking for nothing in return (see Klara Systems as an excellent example within the FreeBSD world).

 

[cracauer@]

Start working for Google and convert them to FreeBSD one machine at a time

 

[Voltaire]

TrueNAS CORE is the world's most popular storage OS. Keep in mind that under the hood this is largely exactly the same as FreeBSD. So you can join one of the companies that use TrueNAS. A lot of big companies use it and as far as I know it's getting more popular lately.
Suppose you want to work purely with FreeBSD, in the US there are several large companies that make use of FreeBSD. To give some examples:
Zscaler, Vertalo, Arthur Grand Technologies Inc., Education Analytics, NANA Regional Corporation, Cradlepoint, Cisco Systems Inc, Cable One Inc., Purple Drive, Crimson Panda, Netflix, Terascope, ..
To summarize, there are plenty of companies in the US that use it, probably not close to you, so you have to be prepared for relocation.

In Europe it is a very different situation. It will depend on the country where you live. For example in France you have some companies that use FreeBSD as the basis for their IT services. In Luxembourg and probably some other European countries there are companies that use OpenBSD for their firewall infrastructure. FreeBSD is hardly used in Belgium as far as I know. In Germany you do have some positions that require FreeBSD knowledge, but less than in France. In the Netherlands you could work for Deciso (OPNsense), Yandex and Juniper Networks.

Sony and Nintendo use FreeBSD in their products. Sony currently has a position open in India that requires FreeBSD knowledge.
You can also search for companies using pfSense, which is also FreeBSD under the hood.

Generally speaking, you'll find that the (FreeBSD) positions are more advanced positions, so you may need to have a few years of experience in a position where you use Linux first. As you probably know, Linux and FreeBSD are very similar to work with and often use the exact same tools and commands.

You can also always do like Jan Koum. Just start a company with other people using FreeBSD. This seems relatively simple to me (for talented developers).

 

[ralphbsz]

TrueNAS CORE is the world's most popular storage OS.

I would think that enterprise offerings such as NetApp would have 10x or 100x more storage they manage than TrueNAS. NetApp also has about 100x more employees than iXsystems (the company that makes TrueNAS, formerly known as BSDi): I think iXsystems has about 100, and NetApp has about 10,000. I don't know whether iXsystems is hiring right now. NetApp certainly has some positions open, but they have also been laying off a large number of people, in particular in R&D.

Interestingly, NetApp's main product (the NFS servers known as OnTap) are also based on FreeBSD. As is Apple's flagship product, the Macintosh. And I happen to know that Apple is hiring right now, right in their file systems development group.

In reality, much of this is irrelevant. Cracauer's comment above is spot on: At least 90% of all computing and storage is already being done by the hyperscalers (the wrongly-named FAANG). And those are committed to Linux, as is much of enterprise computing. We don't have to like it, but disliking it doesn't change the reality. We need to recognize that any one of companies like IBM, Intel or Google has more full-time Linux developers than all of the FreeBSD community together puts into engineering. FreeBSD is a niche solution. It happens to be a very good one, and I'm happy to use it for my personal purposes where appropriate.

 

[Voltaire]

I would think that enterprise offerings such as NetApp would have 10x or 100x more storage they manage than TrueNAS. NetApp also has about 100x more employees than iXsystems (the company that makes TrueNAS, formerly known as BSDi): I think iXsystems has about 100, and NetApp has about 10,000. I don't know whether iXsystems is hiring right now. NetApp certainly has some positions open, but they have also been laying off a large number of people, in particular in R&D.

I don't know what metric it's based on exactly, but TrueNAS has long claimed to be the "World's Most Popular Storage OS." It's the first thing they list on their website: https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

I don't know whether iXsystems is hiring right now.

They currently have 34 open positions: https://www.ixsystems.com/careers/
There is also the following news: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/ixsy...us-as-demand-for-truenas-storage-accelerates/
TrueNAS Enterprise outscores Dell, HPE, and NetApp on Gartner Peer Insights https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/true...dell-hpe-and-netapp-on-gartner-peer-insights/

We need to recognize that any one of companies like IBM, Intel or Google has more full-time Linux developers than all of the FreeBSD community together puts into engineering. FreeBSD is a niche solution. It happens to be a very good one, and I'm happy to use it for my personal purposes where appropriate.

Do you have the feeling that manpower makes a big difference and determines the quality of a product? My Microsoft LifeCam HD 3000 has been working perfectly on FreeBSD for years but I can't get it to work on windows10/11. After all, Microsoft has more developers than the FreeBSD community.

Often you see that FreeBSD takes advantage of open source software that is mainly created for Linux.

I have given the example of webcamd, but you have numerous examples.
Gnumeric was not developed for FreeBSD at all. But it works perfectly and very fast on FreeBSD and it is more advanced and precise than Excel..
Terraform was also not developed for FreeBSD, but it works very well on FreeBSD.
0 A.D. was not developed for FreeBSD, but it boots faster on FreeBSD than on Linux. Do you get my point?

 

[kpedersen]

I don't know what metric it's based on exactly, but TrueNAS has long claimed to be the "World's Most Popular Storage OS." It's the first thing they list on their website

I suspect it is a little similar in logic to the UK phenomenon that every fish and chip shop has a poster claiming:

"Awarded No.1 Best Fish and Chips in England".​

 

[ralphbsz]

(about iXsystems):

I don't know what metric it's based on exactly, but TrueNAS has long claimed to be the "World's Most Popular Storage OS." It's the first thing they list on their website: https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

I have no idea how to measure "most popular". I know that companies such as Isilon, Nutanix, PureStorage sell a heck of a lot more storage systems than iXsystems, not even looking at the 400 lbs gorillas of the field such as NetApp, IBM, HPE, and such. And all of those pale by comparison to hyperscalers, who today provide about 90% of all enterprise storage.

They currently have 34 open positions: https://www.ixsystems.com/careers/

Interesting. If true, that would indicate rapid growth. In the last ~5 years, I've talked to several people who tried to get jobs there (people who have been in the storage industry for long times), and couldn't even get an interview.

There is also the following news: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/ixsy...us-as-demand-for-truenas-storage-accelerates/

That is an interesting article, since it actually has a number: iXsystems claims to have 200 employees. In that case, having 34 open positions would indicate enormous growth right now. For contrast: NetApp alone has 12,000 employees.

Do you have the feeling that manpower makes a big difference and determines the quality of a product?

We're talking about finding jobs in this thread. Statistically speaking, it seems much more likely to find a job with a company that is hiring thousands of people, than with a company that is hiring dozens.

 

[Voltaire]

I have no idea how to measure "most popular". I know that companies such as Isilon, Nutanix, PureStorage sell a heck of a lot more storage systems than iXsystems, not even looking at the 400 lbs gorillas of the field such as NetApp, IBM, HPE, and such. And all of those pale by comparison to hyperscalers, who today provide about 90% of all enterprise storage.

If you really want to know, you can always email them and ask what area they are most popular in. You are right that the hyperscalers like Oracle and AWS are going to store more data than what is likely to be stored on TrueNAS. But they speak specifically of 'storage OS', meaning an operating system specifically designed to store data. AWS is going to store data on many different operating systems because you can use many different AMIs. Amazon Linux, for example, is based on Fedora and is not specifically designed just to store data..

Their claim may well be correct. For example, look at distrowatch. All the systems more popular than TrueNAS do not belong to the term "storage OS" I also believe that there are some companies that sell more storage systems than iX. But the point of TrueNAS is that you can use it on custom hardware that you put together yourself. In this way you can save costs as a large company and be less dependent on other companies. In the end it seems difficult to measure how often it has been used. I can have a large company and download TrueNAS just once, and install it on thousands of systems.

patmaddox also talked about Klara Inc. They seem to have five open positions at the moment: https://klarasystems.com/careers/#careers
I suspect that ZFS development also falls under the term software development, which is what the OP wanted to do.

But again, if you want to develop software and are good at it, you can still start your own company with a few other people.

The fastest-growing open-source startups in Q2 2022 - Runa Capital

Q2 2022 snapshot of ROSS Index featuring the fastest-growing open-source startups by Github stars growth of their repositories

runacap.com

Do you think the above startups would not have been successful if they used FreeBSD? I think over 80% of these startups could have just as easily used FreeBSD, and it could have produced better results for some of these companies.