Title: Senior. Systems Engineer - Infrastructure & Cloud
Location: Houston, TX
Salary: $145,000 - $165,000 / year
Sponsorship: Position is not eligible for sponsorship. Must be authorized to work in the United States.
Benefits: This role is eligible for medical, dental, vision, L/S Term Disability, Life Insurance, 401K, and paid vacation and holidays.
Job Summary The Senior Systems Engineer is responsible for the architecture, implementation, administration, optimization, and support of enterprise infrastructure with a primary focus on Linux operating systems, virtualization platforms, and enterprise storage solutions. This role serves as a senior technical resource for mission-critical infrastructure supporting business operations, application platforms, and data services. The Senior Systems Engineer leads infrastructure modernization initiatives, ensures the reliability, performance, scalability, and security of enterprise systems, and provides technical leadership across storage, virtualization, and server environments. Secondary responsibilities include support for data protection, backup, disaster recovery, and cloud integration services.
Essential Duties - Design, implement, administer, and support enterprise Linux and multi-platform server environments.
- Support the deployment, management, and optimization of hypervisor platforms such as VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, Hyper-V, and cloud-based virtualization services.
- Manage and administer enterprise storage platforms like NetApp, Dell Powervault, and related SAN/NAS technologies.
- Monitor and optimize infrastructure performance, capacity, availability, and resource utilization across compute, storage, and virtualization environments.
- Design and maintain highly available, resilient, and scalable infrastructure solutions.
- Perform storage provisioning, replication, snapshot management, performance tuning, and lifecycle management activities.
- Manage virtualization clusters, host lifecycle management, virtual machine provisioning, migrations, and disaster recovery capabilities.
- Administer Linux operating systems including system hardening, patching, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and automation.
- Support hybrid infrastructure environments integrating on-premises platforms with Azure and AWS services.
- Collaborate with application, database, network, and security teams to ensure infrastructure stability and performance.
- Lead infrastructure projects including hardware refreshes, storage migrations, virtualization upgrades, and platform modernization initiatives.
- Develop and maintain technical standards, procedures, architecture documentation, operational runbooks, and infrastructure diagrams.
- Implement security controls, vulnerability remediation, and compliance requirements across infrastructure platforms.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and provide recommendations for infrastructure improvements and operational efficiencies.
- Support enterprise backup, recovery, replication, and disaster recovery processes.
- Participate in incident, problem, and change management activities.
- Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and knowledge transfer to infrastructure team members.
- Coordinate with vendors and technology partners to resolve issues and support strategic initiatives.
- Participate in after-hours maintenance activities, on-call rotations, and critical incident response as required.
Experience - 6+ years of progressive experience supporting enterprise Linux, virtualization, and storage infrastructure environments.
- Experience designing, implementing, and supporting enterprise-scale Linux server platforms.
- Extensive experience administering VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, Hyper-V, or comparable virtualization platforms.
- Strong experience with enterprise storage technologies, including SAN, NAS, replication, snapshots, and storage performance optimization.
- Experience executing storage migrations, infrastructure upgrades, and virtualization modernization projects.
- Experience supporting highly available, global, or multi-site environments.
- Working knowledge of backup and recovery platforms such as Commvault, Veeam, Rubrik, or similar solutions.
- Experience supporting hybrid cloud environments and integrating on-premises infrastructure with Azure or AWS services.
- Experience with scripting and automation using Bash, Python, PowerShell, Ansible, Terraform, or similar tools.
- Experience implementing infrastructure security controls, vulnerability remediation, and compliance requirements.
Technical Knowledge and Skills Required Expertise - Linux Server Administration (Red Hat, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, SUSE)
- Enterprise Hypervisor Platforms (VMware vSphere/ESXi, Nutanix AHV, Microsoft Hyper-V)
- Enterprise Storage Platforms (NetApp, Dell Powervault)
- SAN and NAS Technologies
- Storage Networking (FC, iSCSI, NFS, SMB/CIFS)
- Infrastructure Monitoring and Performance Management
- Infrastructure Automation and Scripting
- Disaster Recovery and High Availability Architectures
- Infrastructure Capacity Planning
- Infrastructure Security and Vulnerability Management
- Cloud Infrastructure Services (Azure and AWS)
- Identity Services, DNS, DHCP, and Authentication Platforms
- Network Fundamentals including TCP/IP, Routing, Switching, Firewalls, and VPN Technologies
Working Knowledge - Backup and Recovery Platforms (Commvault, Veeam, Rubrik, Dell Avamar, Cohesity)
- Cloud-native infrastructure services
- Configuration Management and Automation Tools
- Patch Management and Lifecycle Management Solutions
Preferred Certifications Linux & Infrastructure - Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
- Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
- Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC)
Virtualization - VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
- Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP)
- Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate
Storage & Data Protection - NetApp Certified Data Administrator (NCDA)
- NetApp Certified Hybrid Cloud Administrator
- Dell EMC Proven Professional Storage Certifications
- Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE)
Cloud & Security - Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate
- AWS SysOps Administrator Associate
- CompTIA Security+
- ITIL Foundation
