Senior Virtualisation Engineer

The Senior Virtualisation Engineer is responsible for the engineering, implementation, optimisation and operational support of enterprise virtualisation and compute platforms. The role delivers secure, resilient, standardised and automated solutions, translating architectural designs and technology roadmaps into scalable platform implementations and operational services. Working closely with Architecture, Storage, Backup, Network, Security and Operations teams, the role drives security, resilience, recoverability, automation and operational excellence across the virtualisation estate., * Engineer, administer and support enterprise VMware vSphere environments, including ESXi, vCenter, clusters, virtual machines and templates.

• Manage VMware HA, DRS, vMotion, Storage vMotion, resource pools and lifecycle management.
• Maintain platform availability, performance, security, upgrades and patching.
• Support VDI environments built on vSAN.
• Support physical compute infrastructure and hardware lifecycle management.
• Manage server firmware, BIOS, drivers and hardware compatibility.
• Support FC SAN, NFS, VMware datastores, multipathing and storage integrations.
• Manage datastore capacity, storage migrations and Storage vMotion.
• Troubleshoot complex storage and virtualisation issues.
• Manage VMware Distributed Switches, Standard Switches, VLANs, NIC teaming and VMkernel networking.
• Support connectivity for management, storage, vMotion and virtual machine traffic.
• Ensure virtual infrastructure is recoverable, resilient and appropriately protected.
• Support backup platform integration, snapshot governance, disaster recovery testing and recovery exercises.
• Maintain high-availability and business continuity requirements.
• Monitor infrastructure health, performance, utilisation and capacity.
• Develop monitoring, alerting and operational dashboards.
• Automate infrastructure administration using PowerShell, PowerCLI, REST APIs and Ansible.
• Support Infrastructure as Code practices and reduce manual operational activities through automation and standardisation.
• Build, configure and maintain enterprise VMware platforms.
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex incidents and technical issues.
• Deliver platform upgrades, lifecycle activities, migrations and technology refreshes.
• Ensure secure-by-design implementations, patching, hardening and vulnerability remediation.
• Support incident, problem, change and operational governance processes.
• Develop documentation, standards and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Participate in an on-call rota and support major incidents where required.

• Extensive experience supporting enterprise-scale virtualisation infrastructure.
• Strong technical expertise in:
• VMware vSphere
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
• VMware HA and DRS
• vMotion and Storage vMotion
• VMware Distributed Switches
• VMware Lifecycle Manager
• VMware Tools and virtual hardware lifecycle
• VM templates and provisioning
• Host Profiles and configuration standardisation
• Fibre Channel
• Multipathing
• Enterprise networking concepts
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Capacity management
• Strong troubleshooting skills across virtualisation, compute, storage and networking.
• Experience working in large enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of high availability, disaster recovery, backup and infrastructure resilience.
• Experience with:
• VMware PowerCLI
• PowerShell
• Ansible
• REST APIs
• Infrastructure as Code
• Git / Source Control
• VMware Aria Operations (or equivalent)
• Desirable: VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware NSX, VMware Aria Operations, HPE ProLiant, Cisco UCS, Pure Storage, Cohesity, Cisco MDS or Brocade SAN technologies, Microsoft Azure, VMware/Broadcom certifications.