VMware Engineer

Senior Infrastructure Engineer (VMware, Data Center & DR) – Contract | New York

Senior Infrastructure Engineer (VMware / Data Center / DR) – Contract

📍 Location: New York, NY (Hybrid)
🏢 Data Center Access: Edison, NJ (Iron Mountain – approx. monthly visits)
Contract Length: 6–12 months (urgent requirement)
🕒 Engagement Type: Contract
🚨 Start: ASAP

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Infrastructure Engineer on a contract basis to support a mission-critical on-prem and data center infrastructure environment. This is an urgent requirement, with the client looking to onboard the right consultant quickly.

The role is heavily focused on VMware administration, physical server management, Cisco infrastructure, and Disaster Recovery, supporting both Production (data center) and DR (on-prem) environments.

This position suits a hands-on senior engineer with 13–15+ years of infrastructure experience, strong ownership mentality, and deep expertise across virtualization, storage, DR, and core Microsoft technologies.

Key Responsibilities

Virtualisation & Compute

  • Administer and manage a large VMware environment, including:

    • Security patching

    • Version upgrades

    • Performance monitoring and optimisation

  • Manage and support physical servers across:

    • Production data center (Iron Mountain – NJ)

    • On-prem Disaster Recovery environment (NY office)

Cisco Infrastructure

  • Administer, maintain, and troubleshoot:

    • Cisco UCS X

    • Cisco UCS Manager

  • Ensure stability, performance, and lifecycle management of compute infrastructure

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

  • Own Disaster Recovery operations, including:

    • Zerto administration

    • Execution of annual DR testing

    • Recovery planning, validation, and reporting

  • Maintain DR readiness across on-prem environments

Storage Management

  • Manage and support storage platforms including:

    • Production: Pure Storage (iSCSI all-flash)

    • DR:

      • 2 × HP MSA all-flash arrays

      • QNAP (primary backup target)

      • DAS

  • Perform storage monitoring, maintenance, and optimisation

Backup, Restore & Patch Management

  • Manage native backup and restore operations

  • Configuration Manager patching and maintenance

  • Ensure data protection best practices are followed

Microsoft & Identity Services

  • Administer Active Directory infrastructure

  • Support Exchange / O365 hybrid environment

    • 2 on-prem Exchange servers (latest version)

SQL Server (Basic Administration)

  • Support SQL Servers hosted on an on-prem cluster:

    • Database maintenance

    • Performance monitoring

    • Indexing, query tuning, and configuration optimisation

End User & Application Platforms

  • Support VDI backend infrastructure:

    • Omnissa Horizon

    • 2 gateways

    • 2 RDS hosts

    • ~150 virtual desktops

  • Support application servers including:

    • Internal business application servers

    • (Exposure to WSO application servers is a plus but not mandatory – training can be provided)

Required Experience & Skills

  • 13–15+ years of hands-on infrastructure engineering experience

  • Deep expertise in VMware administration

  • Strong experience managing physical servers and data center infrastructure

  • Solid hands-on experience with Cisco UCS / UCS Manager

  • Proven experience running DR environments and Zerto

  • Strong storage experience across enterprise storage arrays

  • Working knowledge of:

    • Active Directory

    • Exchange / O365

    • SQL Server administration (support-level)

    • VDI backend platforms

  • Comfortable operating in production-critical environments

  • Able to work independently and take full ownership of infrastructure

Nice to Have

  • Experience with Omnissa Horizon (VDI)

  • Exposure to financial services or regulated environments

  • Experience supporting internally developed or niche application platforms

Work Pattern

  • Primary location: New York office

  • Data center travel: Edison, NJ (typically once per month)

  • Hybrid working with hands-on infrastructure access as required

Why This Role

  • Critical, high-impact infrastructure ownership

  • Senior-level responsibility without unnecessary bureaucracy

  • Immediate need – strong chance of extension for the right consultant

  • Opportunity to stabilise and improve a complex on-prem environment