Senior Virtualization Engineer

This is a 12-month contract position for a Senior Virtualization Engineer based in Richmond, Virginia. The role centers on designing, deploying, and optimizing enterprise VMware vSphere environments while collaborating across infrastructure, network, and security teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and maintain VMware vSphere environments, including ESXi hosts and vCenter Server.
• Perform capacity planning, performance tuning, and resource optimization across virtual infrastructures.
• 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 virtualization issues involving compute, storage, and networking layers.
• Create and enforce VM standards, policies, templates, and provisioning strategies.
• Monitor infrastructure health.
• Ensure security compliance by managing roles, permissions, certificates, and hardening VMware environments.
• Automate administrative tasks when possible.
• 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.
• Provision, configure, and harden Windows Server and other virtual server operating systems according to organizational standards and security best practices.
• Manage Active Directory related server functions, including domain joins, OU placement, Group Policy application, and coordination with identity teams.
• Configure and maintain core Windows Server roles such as DNS, DHCP, file/print services, IIS, RDS, and certificate services depending on environment needs.
• Automate and standardize server builds using templates, unattended installation files, and configuration management tools to ensure consistent deployments.
• Perform OS-level patching, updates, and lifecycle management for Windows virtual servers, ensuring compliance with security and operational policies.
• Implement and maintain backup, recovery, and snapshot strategies for Windows and other servers.

Qualifications

• Required

• 8+ years of hands-on experience administering VMware vSphere environments and Windows Server operating systems.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a closely 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 fundamentals as they apply to virtualization: VLANs, trunking, LACP, jumbo frames, and network segmentation.

• Familiarity with Windows and/or Linux server administration in enterprise environments.

• Ability to troubleshoot complex issues across compute, storage, and network layers.

• Experience with Ansible, PowerCLI, Terraform, or similar scripting languages 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 administering enterprise server hardware platforms (Dell, Cisco UCS, HPE, etc.).

• Some data center experience or the willingness to learn.

• Strong documentation, communication, and change-management skills.

• Preferred

• 12+ years of hands-on experience administering VMware vSphere environments and Windows Server operating systems.

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a closely