Senior Infrastructure Engineer

Responsibilities
We are seeking a seasoned Senior Infrastructure Engineer with 10+ years of experience to own and modernize the hybrid and on-premises infrastructure for a leading U.S. livestock equipment and manufacturing company. In this role, you will act as the principal infrastructure lead: driving data center operations, network engineering, security, and storage architecture.
Because physical hardware resides at the client's manufacturing facilities, you will orchestrate on-site execution remotely by specifying hardware configurations, writing step-by-step runbooks, and directing local IT staff and vendors. Additionally, you will partner with business leadership to advise on core IT decisions and pilot forward-looking initiatives, including on-premises Kubernetes deployment and self-hosted AI models.
On-Call: Periodic on-call availability for major outage resolution and critical maintenance windows.
Language: Strong written and spoken English proficiency for asynchronous and real-time collaboration.
Key Responsibilities
1. Systems, Virtualization & Data Center Ownership
Virtualization: Architect, maintain, and tune a virtualized data center comprising dozens of physical and virtual servers across Hyper-V (Windows Server Datacenter) and KVM (Linux).
Directory Services & Storage: Administer Active Directory, Group Policy (GPO), company-wide file shares and permissions. Oversee enterprise storage arrays (Pure Storage SAN/NAS).
Backup & DR: Own business continuity and disaster recovery strategies (using Bareos, Azure Backup, or similar), including automated backup monitoring, routine restore testing and detailed DR runbooks.
Automation & Maintenance: Streamline server, network, and access management using Ansible and Bash scripts. Maintain core internal tooling (GitLab EE, Passbolt). Patch and lifecycle-manage legacy systems with zero to minimal production downtime.
Network Infrastructure & Cybersecurity
Network Operations: Design, optimize, and manage LAN, subnets, VLANs, routing, and secure VPNs across manufacturing plant and office locations.
Traffic & Security Analysis: Monitor and analyze network traffic (Wireshark, NetFlow) across plant subnets to detect anomalies and optimize throughput.
Vulnerability Management: Perform vulnerability scans, fix security gaps, enforce firewall policies and collaborate directly with the client's in-house cybersecurity specialist.
Remote Physical Operations & Vendor Direction
Hardware & Cabling Specifications: Define hardware configurations (servers, workstations, network switches, IP camera systems) and draft precise step-by-step setup guides for on-site staff.
Structured Cabling & Surveillance: Design Ethernet/fiber cabling alterations, evaluate vendor proposals and verify completed installations. Plan and configure IP surveillance systems (NVR/VMS) and their dedicated subnets.
Remote Hands Orchestration: Utilize out-of-band management tools (iDRAC, iLO, IPMI) to troubleshoot,recover and provision bare-metal systems remotely.
Strategic Advising & Emerging Tech Pilots
Infrastructure Consulting: Evaluate and advise executive leadership on architecture decisions, such as on-premises vs. cloud models for document management.
Platform Innovation: Pilot next-generation infrastructure platforms, including on-premises Kubernetes clusters and locally hosted AI/LLM models (e.g., for automated code generation).
Documentation & Asset Management: Maintain thorough technical documentation, including network topologies, system architecture diagrams, asset inventories and credential/access management records.