Virtualization / automation engineer (senior)

Computer World Services, Corp. (CWS) seeks a Senior Virtualization / Automation Engineer to design, operate, secure, automate, and modernize the virtualization and Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) platforms supporting the USMEPCOM ENLIST program, including VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Site Recovery Manager (SRM), and associated Infrastructure as Code capabilities.

The role owns the hypervisor and SDDC platform layers across production, development, test, COOP, disaster-recovery, and hybrid-hosting environments; guest operating systems, applications, databases, and cloud workloads remain with their respective teams. The engineer also supports the transition of applicable services to centralized DISA-hosting platforms through discovery, migration planning, migration support, validation, and stabilization.

Key Tasks & Responsibilities

• Serve as senior engineering owner for the SDDC platform, establishing architecture, configuration standards, operational procedures, and engineering roadmaps.
• Build, configure, and optimize virtualization clusters, including vSphere HA, DRS, resource pools, hosts, datastores, and distributed switches, and manage ESXi and vCenter patching, upgrades, and certificates.
• Monitor platform capacity, availability, performance, and compliance, and recommend scaling, balancing, or remediation actions.
• Engineer vSAN clusters, storage policies, and fault domains, and troubleshoot vSAN performance, resynchronization, and policy-compliance issues.
• Engineer NSX segments, transport zones, gateways, routing, and distributed security controls, coordinating changes with network and cybersecurity teams.
• Administer SRM protection groups and recovery plans, develop and maintain automated failover and failback procedures, and support quarterly COOP exercises and continuity events.
• Design and implement infrastructure automation using Terraform, Ansible, PowerCLI, or APIs, with version control, peer review, testing, rollback, secrets protection, and drift detection.
• Coordinate with workload owners on resource requirements, placement, templates, and snapshots, preserving the division between platform and workload ownership.
• Provide Tier 4 engineering support for cross-platform incidents, isolate platform faults during outages, and conduct root-cause analyses and develop corrective actions.
• Maintain platform configuration backups, apply DISA STIGs and security baselines, and support RMF evidence, vulnerability remediation, and vendor-advisory reviews.
• Support technology refreshes and modernization; develop platform roadmaps, technical options, and rough-order cost estimates.
• Support DISA-hosting transitions through discovery, dependency documentation, readiness assessment, migration waves, test and rollback plans, cutover, and post-migration stabilization.
• Maintain architecture diagrams, as-built documentation, SOPs, and recovery procedures, and provide platform metrics and modernization status for program reporting.

Education & Experience

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience where permitted by the labor category.
• Minimum of 8 years of relevant experience in virtualization, systems engineering, data-center infrastructure, platform engineering, or infrastructure automation.
• Hands-on experience with VMware vSphere, ESXi, and vCenter and with vSAN, NSX, SRM, or comparable software-defined storage, network-virtualization, and disaster-recovery technologies.
• Experience developing or maintaining infrastructure-automation solutions and troubleshooting complex issues across compute, storage, network, virtualization, and automation layers.
• Knowledge of high availability, disaster recovery, backup and restoration, capacity management, and lifecycle practices.
• Strong written, verbal, analytical, and technical problem-solving skills.

Preferred:

• Formal Terraform and Ansible training.
• Experience with VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware Aria, and PowerCLI, PowerShell, Python, or REST APIs.
• Experience supporting federal or DoD virtualization environments and migrations to DISA enterprise-hosting platforms.
• Experience with DISA STIGs, RMF controls, vulnerability remediation, and configuration compliance.
• Experience developing Infrastructure as Code within CI/CD and Git workflows with automated testing and code scanning.

Certifications

Required:

• None.

Preferred:

• VMware Certified Professional, VMware Certified Advanced Professional, HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation, ITIL 4 Foundation, or relevant cloud, security, storage, or network certification.

Security Clearance

Active Secret clearance or higher is required.

Other (Travel, Work Environment, DoD 8570 Requirements, Administrative Notes, etc.)

Work Environment / Travel:

Remote position; Chicago, IL–area candidates preferred. Occasional on-site support, after-hours maintenance, disaster-recovery exercises, incident response, and travel may be required.

Administrative Notes:

Period of Performance: March 1, 2027 – February 28, 2033 Contract Start Date: March 1, 2027 Note: By applying to this position, the candidate acknowledges and consents to having their resume included in an active competitive Government contract bid.