Principal Systems Engineer

Role Summary We are seeking a highly accomplished Principal Systems Engineer to assume ownership and support for our core enterprise infrastructure and platform services. The key responsibilities of this role are the architecture, reliability, and long‑term evolution of foundational enterprise platforms, including Microsoft Active Directory, Nutanix HCI, VMware ESXi, and Windows/Linux servers. In addition to owning core infrastructure, this role plays a critical leadership role in hybrid cloud, container platforms, and AI infrastructure as they intersect with enterprise systems.

This role will ensure that these platforms are secure, scalable, observable, highly available and operationally sound, while maintaining strong infrastructure discipline and reliability.

• Serve as principal architect and technical owner for Microsoft Active Directory environment, including DNS, GPO strategy, and identity integrations with OKTA and Entra-.
• Define, govern, and evolve standards for Nutanix HCI, including capacity planning, lifecycle management, resilience, and performance optimization.
• Own architectural direction and operational excellence for VMware ESXi / vSphere platforms supporting mission‑critical Windows and Linux workloads.
• Establish and enforce best practices for availability, scalability, security, compliance, and disaster recovery across enterprise infrastructure.

• Provide deep expertise across Windows Server and Linux platforms on an enterprise scale.
• Define automation standards using Power Shell, Bash, and infrastructure‑as‑code to improve reliability, repeatability, and operational efficiency.
• Lead platform initiatives related to patching strategy, upgrades, security hardening, and performance optimization.

• Skilled with Solar Winds as a core monitoring platform.
• Ability to tune Solar Winds for proactive monitoring, alerting, dependency visibility, root‑cause analysis, and capacity planning.
• Define monitoring standards and KPIs to improve platform reliability and reduce operational risk across infrastructure, cloud, and platform services.

• Experience with hybrid cloud environments, with Microsoft Azure as the primary cloud platform and AWS as secondary.
• Design and support hybrid integrations between on‑prem infrastructure and cloud services (identity, networking, connectivity, monitoring) including provisioning, support, and active monitoring.
• Ensure cloud workloads align with enterprise infrastructure standards for security, observability, and operational supportability, and support for IT Fin Ops reporting/visibility/cost optimization.

• Provide architectural guidance and oversight for containerized platforms, including Kubernetes, as they integrate with core infrastructure and cloud environments.
• Establish standards for container platform reliability, networking, identity, and monitoring in collaboration with application and platform teams.
• Support infrastructure requirements for running containerized workloads at enterprise scale.

• Provide infrastructure‑level guidance for AI and GenAI platforms, including Models (Claude deployed via AWS Bedrock, and Gemini via Google Vertex AI), AI Gateways (i.e. Portkey or Kong), and MCP servers, etc.
• Ensure AI platforms are integrated into enterprise environments with appropriate networking, identity, security, monitoring, and cost controls.
• Partner with data, analytics, and application teams to support reliable and scalable AI infrastructure.

• Act as the final technical escalation point for complex infrastructure, cloud, and platform issues.
• Mentor engineers and serve as a trusted technical advisor.
• Partner closely with Cyber security to review, collaborate and implement chosen and/or identified infrastructure recommendations relating to platform & cloud services.
• Lead architecture reviews, platform modernization initiatives, and cross‑team technical discussions.
• Influence technical and executive…