Senior Systems Engineer that will be responsible for designing, operating, securing, and continuously improving the company's Linux, Unix, cloud, virtualization, storage, and related infrastructure environments.
This Senior level position provides technical leadership for complex infrastructure initiatives while ensuring the reliability, security, performance, and recoverability of business-critical systems.
The Senior Systems Engineer partners with IT and business teams to align infrastructure capabilities with organizational priorities, regulatory requirements, and long-term technology strategy.
Essential Functions Strategy & Planning
- Lead capacity planning, lifecycle management, and short- and long-term infrastructure planning for Linux, Unix, cloud, virtualization, storage, and related platforms.
- Design and recommend scalable, secure, and resilient infrastructure solutions that support business applications, integrations, growth, and business continuity requirements.
- Evaluate hardware, software, cloud services, and emerging technologies, providing recommendations that balance business value, risk, cost, supportability, and operational impact.
- Identify infrastructure risks, technical debt, vulnerabilities, and single points of failure; develop and lead remediation plans.
- Clearly communicate infrastructure strategies, risks, dependencies, and recommendations to IT leadership and relevant stakeholders.
Systems Administration & Operations
- Lead the installation, configuration, administration, monitoring, maintenance, and optimization of Linux and Unix servers, file systems, networks, clusters, load balancers, storage platforms, virtualization environments, and related applications.
- Administer and optimize Linux workloads and services within AWS and Microsoft Azure.
- Own the technical design, testing, and execution of system configurations, backups, restores, recovery procedures, and disaster recovery activities.
- Review, test, and deploy operating system releases, upgrades, patches, and configuration changes in accordance with established change-management practices.
- Monitor, analyze, and optimize system performance, capacity, availability, and reliability while maintaining required logs and operational records.
- Lead the administration and support of VMware vSphere, Dell EMC VxRail, hyperconverged infrastructure, enterprise storage, and related platforms.
- Develop automation using shell scripting and other tools to improve consistency, security, operational efficiency, and delivery speed.
Security, Compliance & Access Management
- Secure, stabilize, and support legacy Linux, Unix, and application environments, including systems that cannot be immediately upgraded or retired due to business or technical dependencies.
- Assess legacy platform risks and implement appropriate compensating controls, monitoring, access restrictions, patching strategies, and remediation plans in collaboration with Infrastructure, Security, Application Development, and business owners.
- Administer, secure, monitor, and support Apache Tomcat environments, including version management, configuration hardening, patching, performance tuning, certificate management, logging, and incident resolution.
- Partner with application teams to identify Tomcat and other legacy application dependencies, reduce operational and security risks, and develop practical upgrade, migration, or retirement plans.
Technical Support & Collaboration
- Serve as a senior escalation point for complex hardware, operating system, network, storage, cloud, and application issues across Linux and Unix environments.
- Provide technical leadership for infrastructure projects, upgrades, migrations, recovery exercises, and operational improvements.
- Support application development teams and enterprise applications throughout the project and application lifecycle.
- Provide operational support for Apache, WebLogic, BI Publisher, and related enterprise applications, including collaboration on issues involving Oracle databases.
- Collaborate with IT Operations, Security, Networking, Cloud, Application Development, vendors, and business stakeholders to resolve issues and deliver technology initiatives.
- Mentor junior engineers and other IT staff through technical guidance, knowledge transfer, and day-to-day support.
- Develop and maintain architecture diagrams, technical standards, procedures, runbooks, configuration records, troubleshooting guides, and training materials.
- Participate in an on-call rotation and provide after-hours support during incidents, maintenance windows, and critical business needs.
Core Competencies
- Senior-level Linux and Unix systems administration.
- Infrastructure architecture, lifecycle planning, and technical leadership.
- Cloud, virtualization, storage, networking, and enterprise infrastructure operations.
- Security administration, access controls, system hardening, vulnerability remediation, and compliance.
- Backup and recovery, disaster recovery, patching, monitoring, and performance tuning.
- Automation and scripting.
- Complex troubleshooting, analytical thinking, and sound technical judgment.
- Strong communication, collaboration, documentation, and customer service skills.
- Organization, prioritization, accountability, and attention to detail.
Required Education & Experience
- 7+ years of progressive experience in Linux and Unix systems administration and infrastructure engineering.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex infrastructure initiatives, upgrades, migrations, troubleshooting efforts, or technical workstreams.
- Experience installing, configuring, administering, and maintaining Linux or Unix servers, networks, clusters, load balancers, virtualization environments, and enterprise applications.
- Experience with enterprise storage and hyperconverged infrastructure, including Dell EMC VxRail.
- Experience administering VMware vSphere or a comparable enterprise virtualization platform.
- Experience administering Linux systems or workloads in AWS and/or Microsoft Azure.
- Strong hands-on troubleshooting experience across hardware, operating systems, applications, networks, storage, and cloud environments.
- Strong scripting and automation experience using shell scripting and at least one additional language, such as Python, Perl, or C.
- Working knowledge of DNS, SFTP, LDAP, Active Directory, firewalls, endpoint protection, IDS/IPS, and Linux/Unix operating system hardening.
- Experience with backup and restore processes, disaster recovery, high availability, system monitoring, and performance tuning.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, organizational, customer service, and communication skills.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively with distributed teams while managing multiple priorities in a high-pressure environment.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
Preferred Education & Experience
- Relevant certifications in Linux, Unix, cloud technologies, VMware, Dell EMC, networking, storage, or security.
- Experience supporting Apache, WebLogic, and BI Publisher in an enterprise environment.
- Experience with Oracle databases and related application support.
- Experience supporting regulatory compliance, access reviews, vulnerability remediation, audit activities, and security assessments.
- Experience developing technical standards, architecture documentation, runbooks, and training materials.
- Experience mentoring junior engineers or leading technical project workstreams.
