System Administrator (1464)

Zapata Technology

$85K — $115K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of VMware infrastructure experience in enterprise environments
  • Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent experience
  • Strong problem-solving skills for complex infrastructure issues
  • Ability to drive improvements in technical environments
  • Experience with performance troubleshooting and optimization

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and optimize VMware clusters for performance and resilience
  • Own vCenter health, capacity planning, and performance tuning
  • Troubleshoot performance issues such as CPU ready and storage latency
  • Build and maintain gold images, templates, and standardized deployments
  • Work across storage, networking, and virtualization as an integrated system
  • Evolve the environment towards automation and Infrastructure as Code
  • Support hybrid connectivity and VMware Cloud integrations
  • Act as a technical leader and mentor for junior admins

Benefits

  • Referral program eligibility
  • Onsite work environment in Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD
  • Engagement in hands-on problem solving and environment improvement
  • Opportunity to mentor junior staff
  • Less than 5% travel requirement
Full Job Description
Referral Eligible

Salary $85K-$115K

Referral Eligible

Location: Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (Onsite)
Program: Mission systems supporting DCGS

This is not a ticket-taking helpdesk role.

This is a hands-on position for someone who understands how virtualization, storage, networking, operating systems, automation, and cloud all connect - and wants to own the environment end-to-end.

You'll be the person the team relies on when performance is off, clusters need to scale, templates need to be rebuilt the right way, or hybrid connectivity needs to work the first time.

If you like solving deep infrastructure problems, improving environments, and working in a place where your technical decisions matter, this role is for you.

What You'll Be Doing

  • Designing, building, and optimizing VMware clusters for performance and resilience
  • Owning vCenter health, capacity planning, and performance tuning
  • Troubleshooting real performance issues (CPU Ready, ballooning, storage latency, network bottlenecks)
  • Building and maintaining gold images, templates, and standardized deployments
  • Working across storage, networking, Windows, Linux, and virtualization as one integrated system
  • Helping evolve the environment toward automation and Infrastructure as Code
  • Supporting hybrid connectivity and VMware Cloud integrations
  • Improving how the team deploys, scales, and manages infrastructure
  • Acting as a technical leader and mentor for junior admins


What You Should Be Strong In

  • VMware vSphere / ESXi / vCenter in enterprise environments
  • Virtual networking (vSwitches, distributed switches, VLANs)
  • Storage (iSCSI, NFS, FC, datastores, latency troubleshooting)
  • Performance troubleshooting using VMware tools and logs
  • Windows and Linux server administration
  • Understanding how virtualization supports containers, DevOps, and modern apps
  • Working knowledge of routing, switching, firewalls, DNS, DHCP


Big Plus If You Have Experience With

  • VMware Cloud, Azure, or AWS integrations
  • HCX, cross-environment vMotion, or workload migrations
  • Terraform, Ansible, or other automation tools
  • Enterprise backup/DR and monitoring platforms


What We're Looking For

  • 5+ years of VMware infrastructure experience in enterprise environments
  • Someone who enjoys solving hard infrastructure problems
  • Someone who wants to improve environments, not just maintain them
  • Bachelor's degree in a technical field (or equivalent experience)


Working Conditions:

  • Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.


Position Type/Expected Hours of Work:

  • Full time position


Travel: Less than 5%

Clearance Type:

  • Requires an active TS/SCI.


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