Junior System Engineer - Tier II

Position: Junior System Engineer 
Remote but must be willing to come Washington, DC 20006 as needed
6-12 months 

Job description:

Contractor Role Summary:
We are seeking a Jr. Systems Engineer to work alongside the Office of Technology (OT) Systems Engineering team. This full-time, remote, hands-on role is responsible for the team's daily on-call operations, including standard operational activities, monthly patch management, and monitoring the team's ticket queue for service desk escalations. The role serves as the Tier 2 escalation point for the Systems Engineering team, supporting a primarily Microsoft-based environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the Systems Team ticket and incident queue as the on-call representative during business hours, responding to requests and incidents.
• Act as the Tier 2 escalation point for Systems Engineering requests and incidents, including vulnerability management incidents.
• Perform standard systems engineering tasks, including server builds, backups and restores, connectivity troubleshooting, and monitoring alerts.
• Execute monthly patch management for all Windows servers and troubleshoot patching failures.
• Help maintain the daily health and availability of production systems and services.
• Develop and maintain operational procedures and runbooks.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience supporting Windows Server and Active Directory in an enterprise IT environment.
• Solid understanding of Group Policy and the core protocols Windows servers use for authentication and communication (such as Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP, DNS, and SMB).
• Hands-on experience administering Microsoft 365 services (such as Exchange Online, Teams and Entra ID).
• Experience with Windows patch management solutions, including troubleshooting failed updates and remediating vulnerabilities.
• Working understanding of virtualization and backup and recovery concepts.
• Experience managing incidents and requests in a ticketing system.
• Strong troubleshooting and documentation skills, and effective communication.
• Ability to work independently in a remote environment and be available for after-hours work.