Senior Virtualization Engineer
Location: Richmond, VA
Work Model: Hybrid 3 days onsite
Employment Type: 6-month contract with potential for ongoing renewals
Schedule: Standard EST business hours; occasional after-hours support may be required
Travel: Rare local travel
Target Pay Rate: $45-$55
- This is a W2 position we are not able to consider C2C or 1099 arrangements
- No sponsorship. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S. without employer sponsorship, now or in the future.
About the Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Virtualization Engineer to support and advance a statewide public-sector organizations enterprise virtualization environment. This role plays a key part in ensuring the reliability, performance, and security of critical systems and infrastructure. The engineer will report to the Manager of the Systems and Operations Management team and collaborate closely with technical staff to design, implement, and maintain virtualization solutions that meet organizational needs.
Top Must-Haves
- Strong proficiency with ESXi, vCenter Server, and virtual networking concepts
- Experience with VMware clustering, HA/DRS, snapshots, templates, and VM lifecycle management
Responsibilities
- Design, deploy, and maintain VMware vSphere environments, including ESXi hosts and vCenter Server
- Perform capacity planning, performance tuning, and resource optimization across virtual infrastructure
- Manage virtual networking (vSwitches, distributed switches) and storage configurations (VMFS, NFS, vSAN)
- Implement and maintain high availability, fault tolerance, clustering, and disaster recovery solutions
- Oversee patching, upgrades, and lifecycle management for VMware components and related hardware
- Troubleshoot complex issues across compute, storage, and networking layers
- Create and enforce VM standards, policies, templates, and provisioning strategies
- Monitor infrastructure health and automate administrative tasks where possible
- Ensure security compliance by managing roles, permissions, certificates, and VMware hardening
- Collaborate with systems, network, and security teams on cross-functional infrastructure initiatives
- Document architecture, configurations, procedures, and change management activities
- Provide advanced support for production issues and mentor junior team members
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of hands-on experience administering VMware vSphere environments and Windows Server
- Bachelors degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related field (equivalent technical certification accepted)
- Strong proficiency with ESXi, vCenter Server, and virtual networking concepts
- Experience with VMware clustering, HA/DRS, snapshots, templates, and VM lifecycle management
- Solid understanding of storage technologies such as SAN, NAS, iSCSI, NFS, and/or vSAN
- Working knowledge of networking as it applies to virtualization: VLANs, trunking, LACP, jumbo frames, and segmentation
- Familiarity with Windows and/or Linux server administration in enterprise environments
- Experience with Ansible, PowerCLI, Terraform, or similar tools for automation
- Working knowledge of backup and disaster recovery solutions for virtual environments
- Understanding of security best practices, RBAC, certificates, and VMware hardening guidelines
- Hands-on experience with enterprise server hardware (Dell, Cisco UCS, HPE, etc.)
- Some data center experience, or the willingness to learn
- Strong documentation, communication, and change management skills
Preferred Qualifications
- 12+ years of hands-on VMware vSphere and Windows Server administration
- Masters degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related field
- Deep experience designing, scaling, and optimizing enterprise VMware environments
- Strong understanding of virtual networking (vDS, VLANs, LACP) and storage performance
- Background in infrastructure architecture, capacity planning, and performance engineering
- Demonstrated ability to lead infrastructure projects and mentor other engineers
- Infrastructure automation pipelines (GitOps, CI/CD-driven configuration, infrastructure-as-code)
- VMware Certified Professional (VCP) or equivalent real-world experience; additional certs such as VCIX/VCAP, MCSA/MCSE, RHCSA/RHCE, or storage certifications
- Hands-on Linux administration (RHEL, SUSE, Alma, etc.)
- Experience with other virtualization platforms (OpenShift, Hyper-V, Proxmox, etc.)
- Out-of-band management tools such as iDRAC, iLO, CIMC, or XClarity
- 2+ years of data center experience
- Provisioning, hardening, patching, and lifecycle management of Windows Server
- Active Directory server functions (domain joins, OU placement, Group Policy) and core Windows roles (DNS, DHCP, file/print, IIS, RDS, certificate services)
- Automating and standardizing server builds with templates, unattended installs, and configuration management
- Backup, recovery, and snapshot strategies for Windows and other servers