Senior Associate - Infrastructure Patching SRE

New York Life•New York, NY

19h•$111,500 - $159,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Own the reliability, execution, validation, and issue handling of server, operating system, middleware, database, and cloud infrastructure patching. This role ensures infrastructure patches are deployed safely through lower environments, canary groups, production waves, and validated closure while supporting accelerated remediation for zero-day, Critical VIT, High, and priority patch cycles.

Requirements

5+ years in infrastructure operations, platform engineering, cloud operations, SRE, or enterprise patching.
Experience with Windows, Linux, middleware, database, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, or AWS EC2 patching.
Familiarity with Qualys, Tanium, AWS Systems Manager, Ansible, Puppet, Satellite, SCCM/MECM, or related patching tools.
Strong understanding of change windows, reboot coordination, service validation, rollback, incident response, and operational runbooks.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, hardened AMIs, EKS, or infrastructure automation.
Experience in financial services or other highly regulated environments.
Cloud, Linux, Windows, ITIL, or SRE certifications.

Responsibilities

Execute patching across servers, operating systems, middleware, databases, virtualization, and cloud-hosted infrastructure.
Manage lower-environment, canary, and production patch waves, including change coordination and maintenance-window readiness.
Maintain patch baselines, reboot strategy, deployment readiness, rollback playbooks, and operational runbooks.
Support AWS/cloud patching using approved tooling such as Qualys Patch Management, AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager, Tanium, or other platform tools.
Validate reboot success, service startup, monitoring agent health, platform stability, scan remediation, and infrastructure performance after patching.
Coordinate patch failures, retry logic, rollback decisions, compensating controls, and escalation to engineering or vendors.
Partner with Cloud, Database, Middleware, Network, Security, Change, and CIO application teams to resolve blockers.
Ensure vulnerabilities remain open until remediation is scan-confirmed, fixed through a workaround, rolled back with compensating controls, or formally exceptioned.
Integrate patch execution with automation, health checks, scan validation, evidence capture, and executive reporting.
Improve repeatability for 24-hour Critical VIT, 3-day High, and 6-day priority patching cycles.
Capture patch execution logs, health-check outputs, scan evidence, change notes, and residual risk disposition.
Recommend production go/no-go, rollback, isolation, compensating control, or escalation decisions for infrastructure patch issues.
Pause or sequence deployment waves when platform stability or application dependency risk exceeds tolerance.
Require validation evidence before infrastructure remediation records are closed.