Infrastructure & Cloud Systems Engineer

CTI Consulting • Chicago, IL

22h • Hybrid

About The Position

CTI Staffing is partnering with a well-established professional services organization to find an Infrastructure & Cloud Systems Engineer for their IT infrastructure team based in Chicago, IL (hybrid, 3 days onsite). This is a 6-month contract-to-hire opening with two positions available. This team owns a true hybrid environment: an enterprise on-premises data center alongside a growing Azure footprint. They are investing in automation, Infrastructure as Code, and disaster recovery maturity, and they need engineers who take ownership rather than wait for tickets.

Requirements

• 8+ years of hands-on infrastructure engineering or systems administration in enterprise production environments
• Deep VMware vSphere/vCenter expertise: cluster administration, DRS/HA, vSAN, resource management
• 5+ years with Microsoft Azure: Compute, Networking, Storage, Entra ID, Key Vault, and hybrid connectivity (ExpressRoute, VPN)
• Hands-on experience with enterprise compute platforms and composable infrastructure management tooling
• Enterprise storage administration experience (SAN/NAS): LUN management, replication, performance tuning
• Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform or ARM/Bicep and configuration management (Ansible, DSC, or equivalent)
• Strong scripting in PowerShell, Python, Azure CLI, or Bash
• Proven disaster recovery design and failover testing experience (Zerto, Azure Site Recovery, Veeam, or equivalent)
• US Citizenship required

Nice To Haves

• Azure certifications (AZ-104, AZ-305)
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV)
• Enterprise hardware vendor certifications
• Experience in regulated or compliance-driven environments (SOC 2, NIST, ISO 27001)
• Monitoring and observability platform experience (Azure Monitor, Datadog, SCOM)

Responsibilities

• Administer and optimize VMware vSphere/vCenter environments, including cluster management, DRS/HA policies, and resource and license optimization
• Design, deploy, and maintain Azure infrastructure across compute, networking, storage, and identity, including Entra ID and Conditional Access
• Manage enterprise server and composable infrastructure platforms, including firmware baselines, hardware health, and vendor-coordinated lifecycle management
• Own SAN/NAS storage administration: LUN provisioning, replication, snapshots, performance tuning, and capacity forecasting
• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, ARM templates, or Bicep, plus CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions
• Design, execute, and document disaster recovery and failover tests against defined RTO/RPO targets
• Automate patching, provisioning, and compliance workflows using PowerShell, Ansible, Python, or Azure CLI
• Participate in on-call rotation and partner with security and development teams as an escalation point

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed