Senior IT Operations Engineer

The Senior IT Operations Engineer designs, maintains, secures, and evaluates Kwik Lok's global network, infrastructure, and cloud systems. This role performs highly complex systems support work across a multi-site, international manufacturing environment while providing exceptional customer support to staff. The Senior IT Operations Engineer is responsible for network and infrastructure design, development, and management; identity and endpoint security; and disaster recovery readiness and serves as a senior technical resource to the IT/IS team.

This position reports to the Enterprise Systems Manager and works directly with Plant Managers, Departmental Leaders, international site contacts, and external carriers and vendors to deliver on the Company's infrastructure and security initiatives.

Network Architecture and Operations

• Design, install, configure, and manage network infrastructure (firewalls, routers, switches, wireless access points) across Kwik Lok's headquarters, manufacturing plants, and international sites, including Australia, Japan, and Ireland.
• Design and maintain resilient WAN architecture, including dual-ISP and wireless/cellular failover configurations, to protect plant connectivity and production uptime during carrier transitions or outages.
• Implement network segmentation separating corporate, production/plant-floor, and guest traffic; manage VLAN design, routing, NAT and access rules, IPSEC VPN, and IPS/IDS.
• Design and support enterprise wireless networks (802.1X/WPA2-Enterprise, RADIUS/NPS), including plant-floor wireless supporting warehouse scanning (WMS/RF-Smart), wireless card readers, and other operational technology.
• Manage multi-vendor network platforms (Ubiquiti/Uni Fi, Meraki/Cisco, Fortinet, Sonic Wall, and Barracuda filtering platforms), standardizing configurations across locations.
• Manage network monitoring tooling, conduct regular network performance tests, and produce network status reports.

Security, Identity, and Endpoint Management

• Create and implement network and infrastructure security measures; lead response to security incidents, including credential compromise and unauthorized access.
• Administer identity and access management across Microsoft Entra , Microsoft 365, and single sign-on platforms (One Login), including role-based access control and MFA initiatives.
• Own endpoint security and management posture using Microsoft Defender and Intune, supporting company-wide device standardization (Intune/Autopilot) across offices and plants.

Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Disaster Recovery

• Support virtualization and server infrastructure (Nutanix or comparable platforms), including VM provisioning, Windows Server OS upgrades, and lifecycle modernization of legacy servers.
• Support and document backup and disaster recovery systems (Veeam, Rubrik), including VM snapshots, full backups, and SaaS backup, contributing to a documented and tested disaster recovery posture.
• Participate directly in the deployment, repair, replacement, disposal, and inventory management of computing equipment (firewalls, routers, switches, access points, laptops, phones, printers, conference room hardware).

Service Delivery and Documentation

• Provide seamless customer service support to end users; respond quickly and professionally to employee calls and tickets, and ensure all work is captured in the centralized IS ticketing system (Happy Fox).
• Own issue resolution from start to finish by monitoring unresolved issues and requests to ensure prompt resolution; handle escalated network and infrastructure support issues.
• Communicate clearly with each customer to ensure their understanding of next steps and likely resolution time frames.
• Author clear standard operating procedures and runbooks (in Scribe) covering infrastructure processes, hardware procurement and replacement, and onboarding/offboarding, including documentation that enables non-IT staff to self-serve tier-1 issues and reduce ticket volume.
• Differentiate between errors caused by hardware, software, desktop, server, and misunderstanding of usage, and route each to the correct resolution path.

Projects, Vendors, and Team

• Assist the Enterprise Systems Manager with deployments across infrastructure, networking, telecom (including cloud phone system rollouts), and site buildouts and expansions.
• Work with vendors, carriers, and service partners (ISPs, managed network providers, hardware…