Staff Platform Engineer
Provide technical leadership and ownership of client-facing compute platforms. Design, operate, and maintain the VMware environment while leading the transition to an OpenStack-backed platform. Ensure IaaS, backup, and disaster recovery services are secure, resilient, highly automated, and meet RPO/RTO objectives. Drive automation and observability, create documentation and runbooks, provide training and escalation support, and partner with networking, security, and operations teams.
Responsibilities
- Design and maintain the VMware platform
- Lead the transition to an OpenStack-backed platform
- Ensure IaaS, backup, and disaster recovery services are secure, resilient, and automated
- Set technical direction and standards for virtualization and private cloud platforms
- Mentor and support engineers and administrators
- Participate in on-call and planned change windows as an escalation point
- Define target architecture and tenancy models for OpenStack
- Develop migration and coexistence strategies with risk mitigation and rollback plans
- Partner with networking, security, and operations teams to align designs with standards
- Own design, reliability, capacity, and lifecycle management of VMware platforms
- Establish standards for provisioning, configuration, patching, and performance tuning
- Lead design and initial rollout of OpenStack and integrate core services
- Integrate OpenStack with identity, networking, backup, and observability systems
- Architect and oversee Veeam- and Zerto-based backup and disaster recovery solutions
- Ensure RPO and RTO objectives are met through policies, test restores, and DR exercises
- Drive automation using scripting and infrastructure as code
- Define and implement monitoring, logging, and alerting
- Create documentation, standards, runbooks, and enablement materials
- Provide training and ongoing support to NOC and operations teams
Requirements
- College diploma or university degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
- Significant production experience with VMware vSphere, ESXi, and related technologies
- Experience designing or operating OpenStack or similar cloud platforms
- Experience with Veeam Backup & Replication and Zerto or similar disaster recovery solutions
- Experience with SAN, NAS, and storage integration
- Experience operating Windows and Linux workloads in virtualized and containerized environments
- Scripting or programming experience for automation and familiarity with basic database concepts
- Background in technical support, operations, or SRE-style roles
- Understanding of VLANs, VXLAN, NSX or similar SDN technologies, routing, switching, and load balancing
- Understanding of virtualization, cloud, and infrastructure design patterns
- Experience with automation and infrastructure-as-code tools
- Advanced troubleshooting across compute, storage, and network layers
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, customer service, and prioritization skills
- Self-motivated with a strong ownership and outcomes focus
Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Life insurance
- Short-term disability insurance
- Long-term disability insurance
- Paid time off
- Reasonable accommodations for disabilities