Requirements
The Senior Systems Specialist will provide advanced technical expertise in designing, implementing, administering, and optimizing enterprise infrastructure, including virtualization, Windows/Linux platforms, directory services, storage, and data center operations. Responsibilities include ensuring secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure, providing technical guidance, installing and troubleshooting systems, managing identity services, operating backup and recovery solutions, and overseeing data center operations. The role requires monitoring infrastructure health, planning upgrades, and developing operational policies and documentation. Collaboration with other IT teams and vendors is essential.
Description
Purpose of the JobProviding advanced technical expertise in the design, implementation, administration, and continuous improvement of enterprise infrastructure across virtualization, Windows and Linux platforms, directory services, storage, backup, and data center environments, ensuring that infrastructure services are secure, resilient, scalable, and well documented, using best practices and international standards to support business continuity and digital services at the level of the Authority and the Emirate.Tasks And Responsibilities Provide advanced technical expertise in the design, implementation, administration, and optimization of virtualization platforms, including VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter Server, clustering, High Availability, DRS, vMotion, and virtual machine lifecycle management, to ensure the continuous operation of digital products and services. Provide technical guidance and knowledge transfer to team members, reviewing technical deliverables and building capabilities to ensure high-quality and continuous delivery of infrastructure services. Install, configure, patch, harden, monitor, and troubleshoot Windows Server and Red Hat Linux environments across production, disaster recovery, testing, and development environments. Administer identity and core infrastructure services, including Active Directory Domain Services, DNS, DHCP, and Group Policy, ensuring secure, reliable, and well-governed authentication and directory services. Administer enterprise storage systems, including SAN and NAS platforms, LUN and volume provisioning, multipathing, replication, performance analysis, capacity forecasting, and storage lifecycle management. Operate and maintain enterprise backup and recovery solutions, define and monitor backup policies, retention, replication, and encryption, perform regular restore tests, and ensure alignment with approved RPO and RTO targets. Manage data center operations, including equipment installation, cabling, labeling, power and cooling, environmental monitoring, physical access controls, and capacity utilization, in coordination with facilities teams and service providers. Review and validate server and storage hardware specifications, bills of materials, compatibility matrices, vendor quotations, and vendor lifecycle status to support procurement and capacity decisions. Monitor infrastructure health, availability, capacity, and performance, provide Level 3 technical support, lead root cause analysis, and implement permanent corrective and preventive actions. Plan and execute upgrades, patching, firmware updates, vulnerability remediation, configuration hardening, certificate renewals, and end-of-life or end-of-support replacement activities. Review and enhance operational policies and procedures for infrastructure services to ensure compliance with international standards and best practices. Develop and maintain architecture diagrams, build documents, standard operating procedures, recovery procedures, configuration records, asset inventories, and operational reports. Coordinate with external vendors to secure the best technical solutions and services in accordance with the operational requirements of the Authority and its clients. Collaborate with network, cybersecurity, cloud, application, and database teams, support the integration of new systems, and participate in digital infrastructure expansion and development projects. Participate in disaster recovery exercises and planned maintenance activities to ensure business continuity readiness and resilience of infrastructure services. Prepare periodic technical reports on infrastructure performance, challenges, and analysis results, submitting them to senior management along with recommendations for development and improvement. Perform any other tasks related to the nature of the work as assigned by the direct supervisor.Professional Certificates/ProgramsSpecialized training programs and certificates in systems administration, virtualization and compute platforms, enterprise storage and backup technologies, data center operations, identity and directory services, infrastructure security and hardening, cloud computing and data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery, compliance with local and international regulations, and infrastructure monitoring, automation, and performance optimization.Additionally, these programs cover project management, information security, corporate governance, quality and excellence standards, organizational innovation, creativity, effective performance indicators, total quality management, operations management, and service quality.Preferred professional certifications include VMware Certified Professional (VCP) or higher, Microsoft Windows Server, Hybrid Administrator, or Azure infrastructure certifications, Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) or Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), ITIL Foundation, and relevant storage, backup, or data center vendor certifications.