Infrastructure Architect

Position : Senior Infrastructure Engineer

Location : Houston, TX /Jersey City, NJ (Onsite)

Job Type : W2 Contract

Job Description :

Job Responsibilities

Architecture & Systems Design

• Design and maintain Hyper-V cluster architectures including failover clustering, live migration, storage configuration, and network topology across global data center pools.
• Evaluate hardware BOMs proposed by hardware engineering for Hyper-V performance characteristics processor/memory ratios, storage throughput, network bandwidth, and overcommit suitability and provide technical feedback to inform procurement decisions.
• Audit performance of complex virtual infrastructure across the full stack compute, storage, networking, and hypervisor layers and maintain architecture artifacts (high-level design documents, decision records, diagrams) using firmwide tooling.
• Develop and document reference architectures and best practices for Hyper-V cluster deployment, storage configuration, and workload placement.

Coding

• Create and maintain automation for virtual infrastructure lifecycle management provisioning, configuration, patching, compliance enforcement, and decommissioning of Hyper-V workloads using PowerShell, WMI, and the team's .NET-based workload management platform.
• Write PowerShell scripts for host configuration management, inventory collection, cluster operations, and firmware deployment across the Hyper-V fleet.
• Maintain and extend the existing C# / .NET 8 workload management platform as needed including the server-side orchestration API, distributed worker engine, and Windows client agent components.
• Provide stewardship to other engineers in support of quality delivery peer reviewing automation scripts, infrastructure designs, and technical documentation.

Automation & Continuous Delivery

• Advocate for and implement infrastructure automation, identifying opportunities to automate, combine, or simplify operational processes with a focus on scalability versus resource use.
• Develop and maintain automation for Hyper-V host configuration, cluster provisioning, rolling upgrades, and compliance enforcement using PowerShell DSC, scripts, and the team's workload management platform.
• Support and evolve CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation tooling, including multi-environment deployment and automated testing.

Distributed Systems Design & Development

• Plan and execute Hyper-V cluster upgrades, Windows Server rolling upgrades, and hypervisor patch rollouts across production environments with zero or minimal downtime.
• Troubleshoot production issues across the virtual infrastructure stack hypervisor, clustering, storage, and networking layers using structured logging, event tracing, performance counters, and vendor diagnostic tools.
• Consider all risks, potential environmental impacts, and FinOps implications when designing and implementing infrastructure changes.

Data Fluency

• Identify appropriate data sources and apply appropriate methodologies when making data-based recommendations for capacity planning, performance optimization, and hardware procurement decisions.
• Conduct storage and compute performance benchmarking using industry and internal tooling (e.g., elbencho, VMFleet, diskspd) to validate hardware configurations and inform deployment decisions.
• Deliver against defined SLOs and SLAs; track and reduce events leading to errors or risks.

Cross-Functional

• Collaborate with hardware engineering on server platform evaluation, providing Hyper-V-specific performance requirements and validation feedback.
• Collaborate with vendor partners (Microsoft) on Hyper-V roadmap alignment, feature adoption, and escalation support.
• Collaborate effectively across infrastructure engineering, operations, security, and capacity planning teams.
• Leverage AI-assisted tooling for research, prototyping, and automation development to accelerate engineering cycles.
• Contribute to team and organizational goals.
• Champion the firm's culture of diversity, opportunity, inclusion, and respect.

Required Qualifications, Capabilities, and Skills

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in infrastructure engineering with demonstrated depth and breadth of knowledge across multiple domains (virtualization, storage, networking, Windows Server administration).
• Strong expertise in Microsoft Hyper-V at enterprise scale: failover clustering, live migration, storage spaces / S2D, virtual networking (Hyper-V virtual switch, SET), and Windows Server administration.
• Strong proficiency in PowerShell scripting for infrastructure automation, host configuration management, WMI-based inventory collection, and operational tooling.
• Demonstrated ability to audit performance of complex infrastructure architecture across the full stack and to maintain architecture artifacts (design documents, decision records, diagrams).
• Experience with storage performance analysis and optimization in virtualized environments benchmarking, capacity planning, and storage policy design.
• Ability to evaluate hardware BOMs for Hyper-V suitability assessing processor/memory ratios, storage I/O characteristics, network throughput, and overcommit profiles.
• Experience with infrastructure automation and configuration management tools (DSC, SCCM, Ansible, or equivalent) at data center scale.
• Experience advocating for and implementing infrastructure automation CI/CD pipelines, operational process improvement, and configuration-as-code with a focus on scalability versus resource use.
• Track record of providing stewardship to other engineers through technical guidance, design review, and documentation.
• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.

Preferred Qualifications, Capabilities, and Skills

• Experience with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) at enterprise scale.
• Experience with additional hypervisors (VMware ESXi, KVM, etc.) production experience with dual-hypervisor environments are a plus.
• Familiarity with server hardware architecture (Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC, NVMe storage, GPU accelerators) sufficient to evaluate hardware proposals for Hyper-V workload suitability.
• Experience with network fabric integration in virtualized environments VLAN, SDN, load balancing, and network adapter teaming.
• Working knowledge of C# / .NET for maintaining and extending infrastructure automation platforms.
• Experience with Microsoft System Center (VMM, SCOM, SCCM) at enterprise scale.
• Experience with security compliance remediation Qualys vulnerability management, break management, and security baseline enforcement.
• Experience with performance testing frameworks (elbencho, VMFleet, diskspd, fio or similar) for storage and compute validation.
• Familiarity with using generative AI tools to accelerate engineering and research cycles.