Hybrid Systems Engineer, Infrastructure Virtualization

at Simplesense

• Job title: Systems Engineer, Infrastructure Virtualization
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Mid level, Senior
• Salary: $135,000 - $160,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Ansible, Cloud, Cyber Security, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Linux, Python, VMware
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Denver, United States

About the role

• Infrastructure Virtualization Systems Engineer supporting VMware vSphere virtualization solutions for Installation Resilience Platform. Designing and deploying infrastructure within hybrid team environment in Denver.

Responsibilities

• Develop Virtualization Architecture: Create scalable and secure infrastructure designs that ensure high availability and performance, provide subject matter expert support, and document solutions for deployment teams.
• Deployment: Design, Deploy and maintain small-to-medium scale VMware vSphere environments to support mission-critical workloads. This includes configuring ESXi hosts, vCenter Server, virtual networks, and shared storage (vSAN or SAN) to create secure, highly available clusters that meet performance and capacity requirements.
• Infrastructure Automation: Develop and use Infrastructure-as-Code templates and automation scripts to manage the virtualization infrastructure. Use tools like Ansible (or PowerCLI/PowerShell, as needed) and Bash/Python scripting to automate tasks such as VM provisioning, ESXi host configuration, patch management, and environment build-out.
• Monitoring & Reliability: Set up observability for the virtualization stack to track system performance, capacity, and failures. Implement monitoring and alerting for host and VM metrics (CPU, memory, storage utilization, network throughput) and critical logs. Proactively tune resources and configurations to improve reliability, and coordinate incident response for any virtualization-related outages or performance issues – performing root cause analysis and applying preventative measures.
• Security Hardening & Compliance: Implement security best practices and required compliance standards on all virtualization components. Apply DISA STIGs and other hardening guidelines to ESXi hosts and vCenter configurations. Ensure proper network segmentation, access controls (RBAC in vCenter), and encryption where applicable. Continuously remediate vulnerabilities and keep the virtualization environment in compliance with DoD cybersecurity requirements.
• Collaboration: Work closely with software engineers, vendor SMEs, system administrators, cybersecurity analysts, and operations teams to align the virtualization infrastructure with application needs and security policies. Lead the deployment of new virtualization solutions and document configurations, topology, and standard operating procedures. Provide knowledge transfer and training to the operations team to scale the maintenance of production virtualization solutions

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in IT infrastructure or systems engineering, including hands-on design and management of virtualization environments in production.
• Strong experience deploying, administering, and maintaining VMware virtualization platforms (vSphere/ESXi and vCenter) in on-premises data centers. Ability to configure clusters (HA/DRS), virtual networking, and storage for high availability and performance.
• Familiarity with software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure: experience with VMware vSAN or similar technologies for clustering storage is desired.
• Experience working with enterprise server hardware for virtualization – for example, deploying ESXi on Cisco UCS systems, Dell VxRail or PowerEdge servers, or comparable on-premises infrastructure. Understanding of hardware provisioning, firmware management, and network/storage integration for hosts.
• Proficiency in infrastructure automation and scripting. Experience using tools like Ansible, Bash and/or Python to automate virtualization tasks ( VM provisioning, configuration management, patching, etc).
• Demonstrated knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and version control (git) for infrastructure changes. Comfortable integrating infrastructure automation into deployment workflows (ex. using GitHub Actions or Jenkins to run scripts/playbooks on infrastructure updates).
• Familiarity with infrastructure monitoring and logging tools to ensure system health and performance. Ability to analyze system logs (e.g., vCenter/ESXi logs, OS logs) and metrics to troubleshoot and resolve issues in virtualized environments.
• Comfortable performing basic administrative operations on Linux environments (strong shell/CLI skills). Basic Windows Server administration experience in virtual machines is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).
• Security certifications such as CompTIA Security+ or Cloud+ (or willingness to obtain one within 30 days of hire).
• VMware certification (e.g., VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization) or related credentials are a plus.
• Experience with containerization and modern virtualization platforms is a plus (ex. familiarity with VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid or deploying Docker/Kubernetes on vSphere).
• Must be a U.S. Citizen and able to obtain a DoD NIPR network account and Common Access Card (CAC).
• Must have, or be able to obtain, a Secret Clearance.

Benefits

• Equity
• Medical, Life, Short-Term Disability, and AD&D insurance
• Medical travel coverage
• Dental coverage
• Vision coverage
• 401k matching