Sr. Virtualization Engineer

Ahead is currently seeking a System Engineer to join the Cloud Services team. The successful candidate should have a several years in a system engineering role, with hands on experience working with various datacenter and enterprise level technologies and applications. Must be flexible in technology exposure and willing to stretch beyond what they currently know. The ideal candidate will need to possess exceptional team player skills, while also being self-motivated and driven to consistently deliver outstanding customer support. Additionally, the selected candidate will have demonstrated experience with troubleshooting production problems as well as implementing, upgrading and maintaining enterprise level systems and services.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Act as technical interface to AHEAD Clients to facilitate effective delivery of Datacenter and Cloud related services:
• Datacenter & Collocation Management
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service
• Backup-as-a-Service
• Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service
• Design, implement, troubleshoot, analyze, and maintain internal and external customer environments.
• Create, request, and present technical specifications and requirements.
• Perform hardware and software installations, upgrades and maintenance.
• Participate in after-hours maintenance and on-call rotation.
• Identify, research, and resolve technical problems.
• Support Level 2 and Level 3 Engineers for problems identified with systems and network, and act as an escalation point for Managed Services support technicians.
• Standard system administration duties including equipment install, System/Application install and patch management, log analysis, etc.
• Interface with third party vendors as liaison between client and vendor.
• Utilize superior customer service skills to provide first level interface for CDI clients.
• Plan and implements system automation to improve service efficiency and consistency.
• Create thorough documentation records of design specifications and instructional manuals as necessary to enable Managed Services personnel to be effective in understanding and managing client delivered services.
• Collaborates with other professionals to ensure high quality deliverables within organization guidelines, policies, and procedures.
• Engages in continuous learning to stay abreast on new and emerging technologies.

Qualifications

• 7-9 years of prior IT experience; prior experience working for a service provider a plus
• Prior customer service experience
• Working experience with one or more infrastructure monitoring, alerting, and ticketing platforms
• Working experience managing & implementing virtualization technologies - vSphere, Hyper-V, Prism
• Working experience managing & implementing network virtualization technologies – NSX-T preferred.
• Working experience managing and implementing storage solutions – SAN/NAS, NetApp, Pure, EMC, Nimbus, Nexsan
• Working experience managing traditional computing platforms - Dell, HP, Supermicro
• Working experience managing Hyperconverged computing platforms– Cisco UCS, Dell/HP Blade solutions, Nutanix, VxRail, etc..
• Working experience troubleshooting small networks using built in device tools such as ping, trace route, and nslookup. Cisco preferred but Juniper, HP, or Extreme are acceptable.
• Working experience of basic Linux administration such as managing file permissions, adding users, or setting up basic services
• Team player with excellent communication skills and the ability to manage assignments independently
• Nurturing personality and the desire to help in the development and mentoring of level 1 technicians
• Ability to achieve successful outcomes in handling difficult situations and to work with various customers and management levels
• Analytical and troubleshooting skills
• Ability to work in a fast paced environment
• Shows initiative and acts independently to resolve problems
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and follow through on projects to completion
• Works effectively both as a team member and independently
• Effectively utilizes tools to resolve issues and escalates appropriately
• Proficient in documentation creation leveraging Microsoft Visio & Office.
• Ability to work independently, prioritizes existing projects, and proactively determine areas requiring additional attention, monitoring, or maintenance
• Excellent written, communication, and problem solving skills are a must
• Experience with VMware vCloud Director a plus
• Experience with Zerto Virtual Replication a plus
• Experience with Public Clouds (AWS/Azure) a plus
• Experience with Automation/Orchestration/scripting (ansible/python/PowerShell) a plus