Systems Engineer

OVERVIEWA thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.

Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role s means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee ro to PositionNPR is seeking a Systems Engineer for its Distribution IT Infrastructure team to manage, test, and maintain our enterprise virtualized infrastructure, including servers, storage, and networking systems.

In this role, you will deploy, configure, monitor, and troubleshoot modern virtualization platforms (such as VMware vSphere, HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, or Proxmox) to guarantee high availability, scalability, and security across NPR's core distribution technologies.

This role sits at the intersection of physical and virtual infrastructure: you will help stand up new data center hardware and build NPR's private cloud environment on top of it, from rack and cable to hypervisor and host networking.

Working collaboratively with Infrastructure and Security colleagues, you will analyze business workflows, implement structured change management processes, and support capacity planning initiatives to deliver resilient, mission-critical operations for NPR and our nationwide Member station network.

Responsibilities Physical Infrastructure Build-Out:
Partner with Infrastructure colleagues to install, rack, cable, and configure new server, storage, and network hardware, including firmware updates, out-of-band management (e.g., HPE iLO, Dell iDRAC), and RAID/BIOS configuration, to establish the foundation for virtualized workloads.

Virtual Infrastructure Deployment & Maintenance:
Deploy, configure, and maintain virtualized systems using enterprise tools (e.g., HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, Proxmox, Nutanix, Incus, or VMware) to support operational reliability.

Architecture Evaluation & Testing:
Evaluate virtual system architecture, compare existing applications, and create metrics to measure response times and availability for test environments.

Change Management Implementation:
Recommend and execute system enhancements following established organizational change management policies and procedures.

Operational & Capacity Support:
Assist the Distribution Infrastructure team in executing cloud/virtualization workflows and capacity planning tools focused on return on investment and business value.

Security Alignment & Compliance:
Partner with Security Engineers to ensure virtual hosts, operating systems, and network configurations comply with organizational security policies.

Workflow & Process Analysis:
Analyze and document Distribution IT process workflows, identifying areas for continuous improvement and operational efficiency.

Technical Documentation & Knowledge Sharing:
Create comprehensive documentation, procedures, instructions, and training materials for internal colleagues and system users.

Incident Escalation & Operational Support:
Proactively communicate operational status to management, participate in an on-call rotation, and respond to critical system issues on a 24x7 basis as needed.

The above duties…