Server Engineer

Department: Innovation and Technology Department

Salary: $85,288.00 - $122,601.49 Commensurate with Experience

Welcome to the City of Charlotte

Charlotte is America’s Queen City, opening her arms to a diverse and inclusive community of residents, businesses and visitors alike. Here you will find a safe, family-oriented city where people work together to help everyone thrive. The mission of the City of Charlotte is to deliver quality public services and promote the safety, health, and quality of life for all residents.

Our guiding principles include:

• Attracting and retaining a skilled and diverse workforce

• Valuing teamwork, openness, accountability, productivity, and employee development

• Providing all customers with courteous, responsive, accessible, and seamless quality services

• Taking initiative to identify, analyze, and solve problems

• Collaborating with stakeholders to make informed decisions

SUMMARY

This position is responsible for designing, implementing, administering, and optimizing the City's enterprise private cloud infrastructure and Windows Server environment. Primary responsibilities include administering VMware vSphere virtualization platforms, Windows Server operating systems, Active Directory services, enterprise storage, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions supporting mission-critical applications across the organization.

The position provides advanced engineering, automation, lifecycle management, performance optimization, and technical leadership for the City's on-premises compute infrastructure while ensuring high availability, security, resiliency, and operational excellence. Responsibilities include enterprise virtualization, storage administration, disaster recovery planning and testing, server lifecycle management, infrastructure automation, and advanced troubleshooting.

This position participates in an on-call rotation as needed to perform planned maintenance activities and respond to critical service-impacting incidents outside normal business hours.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer – Private Cloud & Windows Server 

This position serves as the senior engineering resource responsible for designing, implementing, administering, and continuously improving the City's enterprise private cloud infrastructure and Windows Server environment. The engineer provides technical leadership for highly available, secure, and resilient compute platforms supporting critical business and public safety systems. 

Primary responsibilities include administration of VMware vSphere enterprise virtualization environments; Windows Server operating systems; Active Directory Domain Services; enterprise storage platforms; server hardware; backup and disaster recovery technologies; and private cloud infrastructure supporting production, disaster recovery, development, and test environments. 

The engineer is responsible for physical and virtual server provisioning, operating system deployment, patch management, performance tuning, capacity planning, lifecycle management, infrastructure modernization, advanced troubleshooting, and automation of administrative processes. The position develops enterprise standards, technical documentation, operational procedures, and engineering best practices while ensuring supported platforms remain secure, reliable, and fully supported throughout their lifecycle. 

Additional responsibilities include administration of enterprise disaster recovery and business continuity technologies, including VMware Site Recovery Manager, Zerto, backup platforms, replication technologies, disaster recovery planning, testing, and recovery validation. The engineer develops and maintains disaster recovery runbooks and participates in annual business continuity exercises. 

The position administers enterprise storage infrastructure including Dell PowerStore storage arrays, SAN technologies, storage networking, replication, snapshots, storage provisioning, and performance optimization to ensure highly available enterprise storage services. 

The engineer provides advanced administration of Microsoft Active Directory including Domain Services, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, certificate services, authentication services, identity integration, and supporting infrastructure required for secure enterprise operations. 

Responsibilities include evaluating emerging technologies; developing infrastructure roadmaps; implementing infrastructure automation through PowerShell and Infrastructure-as-Code principles where appropriate; participating in architecture reviews; providing Tier III/IV escalation support; mentoring junior engineers; and collaborating with cybersecurity, networking, database, cloud, and application teams to deliver secure enterprise technology solutions.

 

This position participates in an enterprise on-call rotation and may be required to support planned maintenance windows and respond to major incidents outside normal business hours. 

Minimum Qualifications 

• High School Graduate or Equivalent and five  (5) years of related work experience

• OR

• 2 Year College Degree and three  (3) years of related work experience

• OR

• Bachelor's Level Degree and one (1) year of related work experience

•  or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience that provides the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the essential job duties.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• 5+ years administering enterprise Windows Server environments supporting mission-critical business systems. 

• 5+ years administering enterprise VMware virtualization environments. 

• Expert knowledge of VMware vSphere 8. 

• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Windows Server. 

• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services. 

• Expert knowledge of enterprise PowerShell automation. 

• Expert knowledge of enterprise disaster recovery methodologies. 

• Expert knowledge of enterprise storage platforms. 

• Expert knowledge of disaster recovery and replication technologies. 

• Experience administering enterprise backup and recovery platforms. 

• Experience supporting enterprise storage area networks (SAN). 

• Experience supporting high-availability clustered environments. 

• Experience administering enterprise server hardware platforms. 

• Experience supporting environments with hundreds of virtual servers and mission-critical workloads. 

• Experience participating in enterprise disaster recovery planning and testing. 

• Experience performing root cause analysis and complex enterprise troubleshooting. 

• Experience working within ITIL or mature enterprise operational processes. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV) or VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) 

• 8+ years administering enterprise Windows Server environments supporting mission-critical business systems. 

• 8+ years administering enterprise VMware virtualization environments. 

• Experience with VMware vSphere 9 

• Expert knowledge of Dell PowerStore enterprise storage platforms. 

• Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate 

• Expert knowledge of Zerto disaster recovery and replication technologies. 

• Experience administering hybrid cloud environments 

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code 

• Experience with Ansible, Terraform, or similar automation platforms 

• Experience administering Microsoft Failover Clustering 

• Experience with SCOM or enterprise monitoring platforms 

• Experience administering enterprise PKI environments 

• Experience with CIS hardening and security baselines 

• Experience supporting CJIS, PCI or similar regulatory environment

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

The City’s Background Check Policy requires background checks to be conducted on final internal or external candidate(s) applying for any position with the City of Charlotte. The type of information that will be collected as part of a background check includes, but is not limited to: reference checks, social security verification, education verification, criminal conviction record check, and, if applicable, a credit history check, sex offender registry and motor vehicle records check.

Background checks must be in compliance with all federal and state statutes, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The checks must be consistent with the guidelines set forth by these laws requiring organizations to obtain a candidate’s written authorization before obtaining a criminal background report, motor vehicle records check or credit report; and to properly store and dispose of information derived from such reports.

Final candidates must pass a pre-employment drug-screening test and physical examination. During the selection process, candidates may be asked to take a skills test, and/or participate in other assessments.

The City of Charlotte is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, marital status, age, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliation or on the basis of actual or perceived gender as expressed through dress, appearance, or behavior.

Our culture is to serve the community honorably.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply online.

Federal law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job.

You are welcome to visit the City of Charlotte Human Resources Department lobby, where self-service application kiosks are available. They are located in our office at 700 East 4th Street, Suite 200, Charlotte, NC 28202. We are open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (EST), excluding official City holidays.

For questions about your application or the hiring process, please email Careers@ci.charlotte.nc.us.

The City of Charlotte is committed to making our services and programs accessible to all. Upon request, auxiliary aids, written materials in alternate formats, language access, and other reasonable accommodations or modifications will be provided. To make a request, please fill out the Innovation & Technology ADA request form or call 704.336.4120.

BENEFITS

The City of Charlotte provides a comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees.

Click here to learn more about the City of Charlotte’s benefits.

The City of Charlotte is a drug and alcohol-free workplace.