Senior Engineer, Virtualization

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived. 

We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.

Principle Duties and Responsibilities Provide enterprise-level operational support for incident, problem, change, request, and event-management activities

Lead complex and escalated virtualization incidents, including high-risk, recurring, cross-domain, vendor-dependent, and platform-impacting issues

Provide technical leadership during P1 incidents by assessing impact, coordinating technical actions, documenting risks and decisions, and driving resolution through closure

Serve as a subject matter expert and escalation point for virtualization and compute technologies, addressing technical events and requests needing additional resources or urgent attention

Assess customer environments for performance, capacity, configuration, design, resilience, security, and supportability issues; propose and implement resolutions

Provide architectural oversight and validate that proposed changes, designs, and remediation plans align with vendor-supported practices, client standards, capacity, resiliency, security, and service scope

Work across networking, storage, operating-system, security, monitoring, automation, and application teams to troubleshoot complex infrastructure issues

Work with vendors and hardware partners to resolve virtualization and compute issues, coordinate escalations, and implement supported resolutions

Own or contribute to problem-management records, corrective actions, preventive actions, post-incident reviews, and technical root-cause analyses for recurring or systemic issues

Lead or support platform lifecycle activities, including upgrade readiness, compatibility validation, capacity planning, end-of-support and end-of-life assessments, patch planning, firmware coordination, and VCF lifecycle management

Maintain accurate client architecture, access, configuration, monitoring, hardware, firmware, inventory, and maintenance documentation. Reconcile documentation against authoritative platform, CMDB, monitoring, and inventory sources

Ensure that clients' infrastructure is healthy, stable, secure, documented, and configured with accepted technical best practices

Perform recurring operational-risk reviews and identify opportunities to improve platform stability, supportability, monitoring coverage, security posture, automation, and service consistency

Support annual architecture, capacity, lifecycle, and standard-operating-procedure reviews, and provide technical inputs for quarterly business reviews or other strategic client reviews

Own the technical execution of assigned client onboarding and offboarding activities, including access validation, monitoring coverage, vendor access, initial documentation, known-issue identification, and EoS/EoL review

Provide clear technical context, risk, impact, dependencies, recommended actions, and next steps to Client Success Managers and customer technical contacts. Business-impacting or scope-related customer communications should be coordinated through the appropriate Client Success Manager

Participate in 24x7 operations and the on-call rotation, including major incidents and planned maintenance activities as scheduled

Complete training and certification as assigned to further skills and knowledge

Mentor L2 engineers, improve escalation quality, review technical work when assigned, and contribute to standards, runbooks, knowledge articles, training, and continuous-improvement initiatives

Qualifications/ Technology Experience Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (Unique education, specialized experience, skills, knowledge, training, or certification may be substituted)

10+ yrs of experience with virtualization technologies and enterprise infrastructure operations

Experience with VMware vSphere/VVF required

Experience with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) required

Experience with Nutanix AHV required

Experience with Microsoft Hyper-V preferred

Experience with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, including virtual-machine lifecycle management, networking, storage integration, and operational troubleshooting

5+ years of hands-on experience with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) deployment, configuration, lifecycle management, and operational support

Proficiency in VCF lifecycle management, including automated deployment, patching, and upgrades using SDDC Manager

Experience with VCF workload domains, including VI workload domains and NSX-T network virtualization

Knowledge of VCF validated designs and reference architectures for hybrid-cloud implementations

Experience with VCF integration with public-cloud services (VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, Google Cloud VMware Engine) preferred

Experience with VCF's automated deployment and configuration of vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vRealize Suite or Aria components

Demonstrated ability to manage converged infrastructure through VCF's unified platform spanning compute, storage, networking, and security

10+ yrs of experience with operational administration of enterprise IT systems

10+ yrs of experience with performance and infrastructure monitoring tools (LogicMonitor, Elastic, or comparable platforms)

5+ yrs of experience with an enterprise ITSM system. ServiceNow preferred

Experience with Cisco UCS and Dell hardware systems required

Familiarity with Dell PowerFlex/PowerStore/VxRail preferred

Operating System skills with Windows and Linux preferred

Understanding of PowerShell and PowerCLI with ability to create and utilize scripts for administration, troubleshooting, reporting, and automation required

Managed Services or consulting experience required

VMware Certified Professional certification required; VMware Certified Advanced Professional certification preferred

ITILv4 certification preferred

Qualifications: Soft Skills Advanced technical troubleshooting and problem-solving capabilities

Approach projects, changes, and problems with a “security first” mindset

Superior customer service and training skills

Possess a strong sense of urgency and ability to set priorities during normal operations and high-impact events

Ability to work without direct supervision and make sound technical decisions

Team-oriented collaborator willing to share knowledge and experience

Ability to communicate technical risk, business impact, dependencies, decisions, and recommended actions clearly to engineers, managers, CSMs, vendors, and customer technical stakeholders

Ability to remain accountable for coordination and follow-through until the next owner formally accepts an escalation

Ability to balance customer requests with platform capacity, resiliency, security, contractual scope, change control, and operational risk

Excellent written and verbal interpersonal skills and ability to build and maintain collaborative and positive working relationships at all levels

Ability to effectively interact with all levels of business via phone, written communication, and in person

Skilled in achieving results in a customer centric environment

Self-motivated, able to work in a fast-paced 24x7 managed-services environment

Why AHEAD:

Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.

We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.

India Employment Benefits include:  Comprehensive health insurance coverage for employees, with options to extend coverage to dependents Paid time off and company holidays, along with additional leave benefits as per policy Flexible work arrangements, supporting work-life balance Learning and development opportunities to support continuous growth and upskilling Employee wellness initiatives and programs focused on physical and mental well-being Retirement and statutory benefits in line with India regulations Inclusive and people-first culture, with a strong focus on collaboration and ownership