Senior IT Technical Systems Engineer

SUMMARY OF ROLE

• The Senior IT Technical Systems Engineer is responsible for effective provisioning, installation/configuration, operation, and maintenance of systems hardware, software and related on premises / cloud infrastructure.
• This individual participates in technical research and development to enable continuing innovation within all spectrums of IT infrastructure. This individual ensures that system hardware, operating systems, software / firmware code upgrades, and related procedures adhere to organizational policies and methodologies.
• This individual will assist project teams with technical issues in the Initiation and Planning phases of our standard Project Management Methodology.
• These activities include the definition of needs, benefits, and technical strategy; research & development within the project life-cycle; technical analysis and design; and support of operations staff in executing, testing and rolling-out the solutions.
• Participation on projects is focused on smoothing the transition of projects from development staff to production staff by performing
• operations activities within the project life cycle.
• This individual is accountable for the following Windows Systems including but not limited to:
  • Microsoft Exchange
  • Active Directory
  • File Services
  • FTP
  • SCCM
  • WSUS
  • DNS
  • DHCP
  • Windows Server Operating Systems
  • IBM server hardware
  • Hyper-V
  • Microsoft cloud infrastructure
  • Office 365 administration.

KEY WORK OUTPUT AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

Engineering and Provisioning

• Engineering of system related solutions for various project and operational needs.
• Administer Office 365 backend related functions for all the Group's employees
• Administer Microsoft Azure IaaS and networking components
• Assist with AD and Exchange DR testing on a bi-annual basis
• Document all testing related on DR activities and new deployments.
• Install new / rebuild existing servers and configure hardware, peripherals, services, settings, directories, storage, etc. in accordance with standards and project/operational requirements.
• Develop and maintain installation and configuration procedures.
• Contribute to and maintain system standards.
• Research and recommend innovative, and where possible automated approaches for system administration tasks.
• Identify approaches that leverage our resources and provide economies of scale.
• Identify ways of automating tasks in the server environment.

Operations and Support

• Perform daily system monitoring in Solarwinds and ensure that all alerts are attended to and remediated accordingly.
• Verify the integrity and availability of all hardware, server resources, systems, and key processes, reviewing system and application logs, and verifying completion of scheduled jobs.
• Perform regular security monitoring to identify any possible intrusions.
• Perform standby duties as and when requested.
• Attend to any open calls after hours while on standby in a particular week.
• Create, change, and delete user accounts, mailboxes and groups as per requests.
• Provide Tier III/other support per request from various departments and business units.
• Investigate and troubleshoot issues.
• Repair and recover from hardware or software failures.
• Coordinate and communicate with impacted business units and/or departments.
• Work closely with the security teams to remediate any vulnerabilities detected on any server operating systems.
• Work closely with senior architects in the team and assist where required.
• Overtime duties will be performed as and when required.
• Travel may be required as part of your job function.

Maintenance

• Apply OS patches and upgrades on a regular basis, and upgrade administrative tools and utilities.
• Configure / add new services as necessary.
• This is to be done according to the Group's patch schedules and roster.
• Upgrade and configure system software that supports the Group's infrastructure or applications as per project or operational needs.
• Maintain operational, configuration, or other procedures.
• Perform periodic performance reporting to support capacity planning and remediation thereof.
• Perform ongoing performance tuning, hardware upgrades, and resource optimization as required. Configure CPU, memory, and disk partitions as required.
• Maintain data centre environmental and monitoring equipment.

General

• Interfaces with Information Management Team and IT desktop support team to define and create infrastructure services and solutions in line with business requirements
• Interface with 3rd party vendors to ensure operations conform to best practice and industry standards.
• Perform operations as part of the technical Infrastructure team
• Mentor and involve junior team members and provide in house training as required.
• Develop "personal development plan". Short, medium and long Term.
• Manage personal KPI's in accordance with company policy and performance management guidelines.
• Ensure that the infrastructure team meets the agreed incident, problem and service level agreements.
• Adhere to team plans for Projects as required, manage own deliverables and timeframes to ensure that the team deliver to committed tasks and projects deadlines.
• Ensure that the required modifications are made to designs, configurations and architecture of existing infrastructure to ensure optimum use of all hardware and software resources.
• Conduct regular reviews and revisions of the Capacity Plan, in line with the organisation’s business planning cycle, identifying current usage and forecast requirements during the period covered by the plan
• Proactively improving service availability wherever possible, and optimising the availability of the IT Infrastructure to deliver cost-effective improvements that deliver tangible benefits to the business.
• Research knowledge of future demand for IT services and predict the effects of demand on performance service levels.
• Provide direction for future capacity requirements based on business plans, usage trends, sizing of new services, etc.