Contract to hire - Jersey City- onsite
Sorry, no sponsorship is available for this role
We are seeking a senior-level infrastructure engineer to join a platform engineering team responsible for designing, operating, and evolving large-scale Microsoft Hyper‑V environments deployed across multiple data centers. This role focuses on engineering, automation, and performance, not day‑to‑day administration.
The ideal candidate has hands-on experience operating enterprise Hyper‑V clusters in production, automates infrastructure at scale using PowerShell, and brings strong judgment around hardware selection, storage performance, and platform design.
This position works closely with cross‑functional partners such as hardware engineering, capacity planning, and security teams to ensure the virtualization platform is reliable, scalable, and efficient.
Key Responsibilities
Platform Architecture & Design
- Design, maintain, and evolve Hyper‑V cluster architectures including compute, storage, and networking components.
- Develop best‑practice reference architectures for cluster deployment, failover, and workload placement.
- Participate in platform design reviews and produce technical documentation, diagrams, and design records.
- Evaluate infrastructure tradeoffs related to resiliency, scalability, and cost.
Hyper‑V & Clustering Engineering
- Engineer and operate Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) environments at scale.
- Plan and execute rolling upgrades of Windows Server and Hyper‑V with minimal service impact.
- Design and operate Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and associated storage configurations.
- Troubleshoot cluster health, failover behavior, and performance issues across production environments.
Automation & Tooling
- Build and maintain automation for host and cluster lifecycle operations using PowerShell.
- Develop scripts and tooling for provisioning, configuration, patching, compliance, and decommissioning.
- Create automation that safely scales across large host fleets using WMI, APIs, and configuration management patterns.
- Review and improve existing automation authored by other engineers.
Performance & Capacity Engineering
- Analyze platform performance across compute, storage, network, and hypervisor layers.
- Conduct benchmarking and validation using industry or internal tools (e.g., disk and workload simulators).
- Translate performance data into actionable recommendations for platform tuning and capacity planning.
- Support service reliability objectives by identifying and reducing performance and availability risks.
Hardware & Infrastructure Evaluation
- Review proposed hardware configurations for virtualization suitability.
- Assess CPU, memory, storage, and network characteristics as they relate to Hyper‑V workload density.
- Provide engineering feedback to inform procurement and platform standards.
- Collaborate with hardware specialists during evaluation and rollout phases.
Collaboration & Stewardship
- Partner with security, operations, and capacity teams on platform initiatives.
- Provide technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers.
- Participate in design reviews, incident retrospectives, and engineering forums.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of platform processes and tooling.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering with depth across virtualization, Windows Server, storage, and networking.
- Hands‑on experience operating enterprise‑scale Hyper‑V environments in production.
- Strong experience with Windows Server Failover Clustering and live migration.
- Proficient in PowerShell scripting for automation and infrastructure tooling.
- Solid understanding of data‑center‑scale design concepts (fault domains, availability zones, blast radius).
- Proven ability to troubleshoot complex systems across multiple infrastructure layers.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in production environments.
- Familiarity with performance benchmarking and capacity modeling for virtualized platforms.
- Experience working with additional hypervisors in mixed environments.
- Familiarity with infrastructure CI/CD concepts and configuration‑as‑code practices.
- Working knowledge of C# or .NET used in internal tooling or automation platforms.
- Experience collaborating with hardware vendors or platform engineering teams.
What Success Looks Like
- The Hyper‑V platform is stable, performant, and well‑automated.
- Infrastructure changes scale cleanly and predictably across environments.
- Platform decisions are informed by data, benchmarking, and engineering judgment.
- Automation reduces manual work and operational risk.
- Other engineers rely on you for technical guidance and platform standards.