Senior Systems Engineer Team Lead; Remote

VetsEZ is seeking a Team Lead / Senior Systems Engineer to support enterprise healthcare IT operations for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This role leads the systems engineering and administration team while providing senior, hands‑on engineering of Windows-based environments supporting mission-critical applications and data platforms. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing and managing physical and virtual server infrastructure, system hardening, enterprise backups, and secure configuration of Windows infrastructure within federal or healthcare environments, along with experience leading technical teams.

This position requires U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.

• Lead a team of system administrators and engineers, assigning work, setting priorities, and tracking progress against program deliverables, maintenance windows, and schedules.
• Serve as the team's primary technical point of contact with program leadership, application developers, database engineers, cybersecurity personnel, and VA stakeholders.
• Design, engineer, and maintain Windows Server infrastructure (2016, 2019, and newer) across development, staging, and production environments, including capacity planning and lifecycle upgrades.
• Architect and oversee enterprise services including Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, SMB, RDP, and Group Policy Objects (GPOs), and establish configuration standards for the team.
• Design and maintain high‑availability solutions including server clusters, SAN‑attached volumes, multipath I/O (MPIO), and NIC teaming with Mellanox NICs and switch integrations.
• Oversee virtual (Hyper‑V) and physical platforms, including HP Pro Liant DL Series servers and blades, firmware updates, and diagnostics.
• Lead implementation of VA/DoD Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), vulnerability remediation, and secure configuration of remote access tools including sFTP and RDP.
• Own the enterprise backup strategy using Commvault, including scheduling, validation, and restoration testing.
• Direct system monitoring with SCOM, Solar Winds, or equivalent tools, and serve as the senior escalation point for complex incidents and root cause analysis.
• Plan and coordinate deployment of enterprise software tools including Visual Studio, Power BI, ER/Studio, Jupyter Lab, SQL Server, and others.
• Lead change management for system changes, including technical review of team changes, risk assessment, and rollback planning.
• Establish Power Shell automation standards and review scripts produced by the team, and guide the team's responsible use of AI‑assisted tools.
• Ensure technical documentation, configuration guides, and system topology diagrams are complete and current for operational and audit readiness.
• Mentor and develop team members, support onboarding and training, and provide input on team performance and staffing needs.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, electronics engineering, or another engineering or technical discipline. Eight (8) years of additional relevant experience may be substituted for the degree.
• 5+ years of experience.
• Experience administering and engineering Windows Server environments in large‑scale or enterprise settings.
• Experience leading or serving as technical lead for systems administration or infrastructure engineering teams, including assigning work and reviewing team output.
• Experience designing and engineering enterprise Windows infrastructure, including high‑availability, clustering, and SAN‑attached storage solutions.
• Hands‑on experience with Active Directory, GPOs, Windows clustering, sFTP configuration, and SAN‑attached storage.
• Proficiency in patch management, system hardening, and compliance with federal…