VMWare Engineer Duration: 12+Months Contract Location: Alpharetta, GA Description: The VMWare Engineer 2 will be part of the Data Center Operations Team responsible for effective provisioning, installation, configuration, operation, and maintenance of systems to support core production server systems, information systems, and technology infrastructure. This individual will lead and enable continuing innovation within the infrastructure ensuring that supporting hardware; operating systems, software systems, and related policies and procedures comply with and adhere to, highly available and redundant business critical systems. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: The duties and responsibilities of the VMWare Engineer 2 include but are not limited to the following: Interface with all levels of TK organizations to understand and document the existing data center business and technical requirements. Work with senior team members to analyze existing data center technologies and processes resulting in recommendations relative to the shared service model. Ability to act as a liaison between the User Support Team and data center resources to troubleshoot and resolve escalated issues. Familiar with the execution of Change Management procedures in a high availability data center environment Work with senior team members to provide a roadmap and data center solutions to provide high availability and redundancy within both the primary and backup data centers. Provide support and virtualized service solutions in a Windows or mixed operating system environment. Provide server-based solutions and support for both the core data centers and distributed servers (local data closets). Provide break/fix support for various Windows Server OS based solutions utilizing remote terminals Assisting in the architecture, design, and implementation of Windows Server Technologies. Support various backup solutions of current environments and help deploy and manage future backup solutions. Work with senior team members to manage and deploy Citrix and VMware virtual desktop solutions and research other future desktop alternatives. Develop and adhere to software and procedural standards in a mixed operating system environment. Proven ability to learn, support and manage applications in a short timeframe as needed Ensure compliance with various audit standards (ISO 27001, SAS70, etc.). Help design, build, socialize and manage to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for all products offered and supported within the Data Center. Act in concert with the other Data Center team members, sharing and contributing ideas to other areas, and cross training peers. Able to travel as needed to support various projects around North America. Availability for On Call rotation and support as required. 5+ years enterprise class VMware supported, fully replicated data center environments. VMware vSphere 5 a plus Experience executing datacenter consolidations, relocations, and migrations Experience with disaster recovery and disk based backup strategies including migrations from tape technologies Experience developing and managing data center operations procedures including asset management, change management, and incident management System migration and consolidation experience with VMware vSphere and ESXi technologies Hardware troubleshooting experience with blade server technologies 3+ years of experience with performance monitoring tools and reporting methodologies Knowledge of enterprise application hosting lifecycle management Experience with high level, high visibility projects with vendors and customers 8+ years Windows 2003/2008 and Active Directory (DNS, DHCP, VPN, IIS, etc.) Extensive knowledge of all Microsoft applications (Office Suite, Visio, Project, Outlook) 3+ years of experience with industry standard Antivirus Suites (Sophos, Trend Micro, McAfee) Knowledge of desktop application packaging and electronic application deployment (SCCM) Preferred Requirements: Experience with Cisco UCS Unified Fabric and Vblock SAN /VMware implementations. NetApp, VMware, Microsoft and or Cisco professional certifications strongly preferred. Data Center resiliency, recovery and high availability. VEEAM Backup German language skills a plus EDUCATION: ? Preferred ? Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or a related discipline or 10+ years equivalent experience is desired