Some version of my resume was still floating around the internet.
A recruiter found it and sent me a six-month systems software contract in Fort Collins. The job was 95 percent Linux and 5 percent Windows. It wanted installation, command-line work, Java, Perl, C or C++, hardware setup, documentation, QA, and coordination with teams in India, Brazil, and China.
It also required some early mornings.
The list sounded like somebody had combined a systems administrator, software developer, hardware technician, and quality engineer into one contract. There was no relocation assistance, no corp-to-corp arrangement, and a request to respond immediately with an updated Word resume, rate expectations, availability, and a short pitch about why I was ideal.
I was already Director of Information Technology at Beatport. My work included Linux, storage, networks, and keeping a global online store available. The contract was not a promotion. It was a message from an older version of my career that still existed on job boards.
I did not reply, at least not from the archive I still have. That did not stop the job alerts. Once a resume entered the recruiter databases, it seemed able to live forever.
The interesting part was the requirements. Global coordination, Linux-heavy infrastructure, hardware, testing, and independent problem-solving were all becoming ordinary parts of systems work. The title could change, but the market kept circling the same set of skills.
I was still curious enough to read these messages. They were a rough view of what companies thought they needed and what they thought that work should be called.
This one called it Systems Software Engineer.
The inbox called it another Linux admin job.