Senior Systems Engineer​/Solutions Architect

About The Role

vdBA Secure Ops is building a security-led managed services practice for life sciences clients. The Senior Systems Engineer / Solutions Architect is the most senior technical resource on the delivery team — the Tier 3 escalation point for the service desk, the designer of the Microsoft-centric, security-hardened environments our clients run on, and a builder of the automation and AI tooling that keeps the team efficient as we scale.

This role blends deep hands‑on engineering with client‑facing solution design.

vdBA Secure Ops is building a security-led managed services practice for life sciences clients. The Senior Systems Engineer / Solutions Architect is the most senior technical resource on the delivery team — the Tier 3 escalation point for the service desk, the designer of the Microsoft-centric, security-hardened environments our clients run on, and a builder of the automation and AI tooling that keeps the team efficient as we scale.

This role blends deep hands‑on engineering with client‑facing solution design.

• Serve as the Tier 3 escalation point for the service desk, resolving the most complex issues across infrastructure, cloud, and security.
• Mentor and train Tier 1/2 technicians; build technical documentation and runbooks that raise the team's overall capability.
• Own root-cause analysis for recurring or high-impact incidents.

• Design end-to-end technical solutions for clients spanning Microsoft 365, Azure, identity/security, networking, and endpoint management.
• Partner with sales and leadership to scope new client engagements, contribute to proposals/SOWs, and estimate effort.
• Lead technical onboarding and migrations for new clients into the managed environment.
• Establish and maintain architecture standards and reference designs the team can build against consistently.

• Architect and administer Microsoft 365 and Azure environments: identity (Entra /Azure AD, conditional access), Intune/endpoint management, Exchange Online, SharePoint/One Drive, and Azure infrastructure.
• Implement and maintain security controls across the Microsoft stack: MFA/conditional access, endpoint protection, DLP, and identity governance.
• Support alignment of client environments to compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA, HITRUST) in partnership with the security team.

• Build automation using Power Shell (and other scripting languages) to streamline provisioning, monitoring, and remediation across client environments.
• Design and build AI-assisted tooling and agents — using platforms like Claude — to automate documentation, ticket triage, reporting, and other repeatable workflows.
• Continuously look for opportunities to reduce manual ticket volume through automation and self-service.

• Support broader infrastructure needs: server administration (Windows Server, Active Directory), virtualization, backup/disaster recovery, and core networking (firewalls, switching, VPN).
• Participate in on-call/escalation rotation for critical incidents as needed.

• Must come from a scaled MSP, with experience supporting multiple clients/environments at once — not a single-organization IT background.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise in Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365/O365 administration and architecture.
• Strong security background: identity and access management, endpoint security, conditional access, and general security best practices.
• Strong scripting ability, particularly Power Shell.
• Experience with — or strong interest in — building automation and AI agents using tools like Claude.
• Proven experience serving as an escalation point for a…