Microsoft Systems Engineer

Overview

This senior technical position will involve working in a team environment with a group of Systems Engineers designing technical architectures and implementing complex customer environments. Involving frequent collaborative efforts with engineers from both the UNIX and network engineering disciplines, this position will implement a variety of customer environments across multiple data centers throughout the Northeast and Midwest United States. The position will also include regular communication to the Operations Support Center ("OSC") in multiple geographic regions.

The successful candidate will have a strong technical acumen with a deep knowledge of the fundamentals of the Windows operating system. The successful candidate must also posses strong communication skills and be able to communicate to both internal and external users as well as customers on a variety of levels. A strong desire to learn and expand on existing knowledge is a requirement. Industry standard certifications are also a plus.

Technical responsibilities for the position will include building and administering multiple Active Directory forests and domains, involving multiple Microsoft technologies including Exchange, SQL, WSUS, SCOM, IIS, SharePoint and Terminal services. These environments will be either in a customer shared or dedicated arrangement, on either physical or virtual (VMware) platforms. Additional experience that will benefit the candidate will include, but is not limited to, VMware, Cisco IOS, Juniper ScreenOS and EMC CLARiiON & Equallogic PS Series SAN platforms.

Minimal Travel Requirement - 10% or less.

Primary Functions

• Administration of the multiple Windows 2003/8 domains that includes, but is not limited to,Active Directory, IIS, Exchange 2003/7 and infrastructure monitoring using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.
• Technical activities including hardware/OS/application implementation, upgrades and support.
• Review and recommend server & software for corporate and customer applications.
• Field, review and resolve customer troubles as escalated by Expedient's OSC.
• Provide system performance and tuning as well as root cause determination in the event of failures.
• Produce and presentdocumentation, training and standard operating procedures for both internal and customer use.
• Participate in engineering on-call, approximately 1 week per month.

Qualifications

Required

• 4-7+ years Windows systems & domain administration with Windows 2003 or later.
• Experience administering an Active Directory environment, with extensive knowledge of group policy.
• Strong understanding of Internet/IP related technologies including, but not limited to, DNS, SMTP, HTTP/S, IP subnetting.
• Experience with Fiberchannel/iSCSI/SAS storage arrays. Understanding of concepts such as RAID.
• Have a working knowledge of networking technologies such as TCP/UDP port requirements, 802.1Q network tagging and routing.
• Ability to prioritize and be productive in high-pressure situations, providing timely status updates to customers, the OSC, and/or project management.
• Strong trouble-shooting ability. Ability to identify and resolve problems in “down” situations.

Preferred

• 1-2+ years VMware ESX Enterprise administration, in a fully redundant environment utilizing SAN storage backend.
• Experience with scripting in a Windows environment (e.g. PowerShell and VBScript).
• Experience with administering Exchange 2003/2007 environments.
• B.S. in a technical discipline.
• SAN administration experience.
• Network administration experience (layer-2 switching and firewalling).
• Backup and backup related technology experience, with EMC Networker being preferred.
• Experience with database technologies such as MS SQL, MySQL or Oracle.

Questions You Should Know

To give you, the potential candidate, an understanding of the technical acumen required by the position, we've put together some sample questions that would be asked on a phone screen. If you find yourself unable to answer a more than one or two questions without assistance (i.e. Google or the like), then it's likely you will not pass the phone screen. Answers to these questions should not be submitted with your resume; this is simply to help guide you in understanding technical expertise requirements:

1. Define (3) levels of RAID; if parity is involved describe how the parity rests on the disks.
2. True or False: An SSL website requires a dedicated IP address. Why?
3. What port does SMTP, HTTP, and DNS run on?
4. How many IPs (approximately) are in a Class B network?
5. Name 3 processor models (mainline CPUs  – e.g. manufactured by Intel, AMD, SUN, IBM) which were produced in the last 4 years. Compare/contrast 2.
6. What’s the maximum amount of memory Windows 2003 Standard Edition can address? What about Windows 2008 Standard Edition?
7. What is the GAL?
8. What’s the difference between SCR and CCR?
9. How do you extend the C: partition?

Please send a copy of your resume and cover letter to: sys-resumes@expedient.com

EOE/AA

This position requires you to be authorized to work in the United States.