Senior Systems Engineer (Hybrid or Remote)

Rocket Companies • Remote - Michigan, MI

5d • $84,000 - $207,000

About The Position

The Senior Systems Engineer designs, builds, and integrates server and platform infrastructure to ensure stable, secure, and efficient systems that support core organizational functions. The role leads medium-to-large initiatives spanning multiple teams, improves delivery quality through automation and standards, and partners with developers and stakeholders to deliver end-to-end solutions. It also uses AI tools to accelerate engineering and operational workflows while validating outputs for safety and compliance.

The position helps shape Rocket’s Data Platform infrastructure across AWS, on-premises systems, and enterprise data services. The team is evolving toward a platform engineering model emphasizing automation, observability, secure self-service, reusable patterns, AI-assisted operations, and cloud-based data infrastructure best practices. The engineer supports existing systems while developing the tools, standards, documentation, and guardrails needed to make infrastructure easier and safer to operate and consume.

The role leads platform architecture and delivery, supports hybrid and multicloud systems, implements infrastructure automation and AI enablement, and advances reliability, security, and operational practices. It provides tier-3 production support and may participate in an on-call rotation, including nights and weekends. The engineer also develops reusable platform capabilities, shares knowledge across the organization, optimizes costs, and mentors other systems engineers.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in workstation or server administration.
• At least 3 years of experience in systems engineering delivering production solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office and familiarity with documentation and work management tools such as Confluence and Jira.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in PowerShell and Bash, and proficiency in at least one higher-level language such as .NET, Python, or Go.
• Solid knowledge of Windows and Linux servers, virtualization, and containerization such as Kubernetes or Docker.
• Knowledge of networks, including SAN/LAN, load balancing, and hybrid connectivity such as VPN, Direct Connect, or ExpressRoute.
• Experience operating in AWS and at least one additional cloud, Azure or GCP, as well as on-premises data center environments.
• Practical experience with AI-powered tools such as copilots, LLM automations, or chatops, with attention to security and data governance.
• Infrastructure as Code skills, such as Terraform or CloudFormation/Bicep, and experience with CI/CD for infrastructure and configurations.
• Experience with observability tooling for logs, metrics, and traces, and reliability concepts such as SLOs and error budgets.
• Knowledge of code development practices or equivalent enterprise application integration experience.
• Experience supporting production infrastructure in hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, with a working understanding of networking, identity, access, and connectivity fundamentals.
• Demonstrated ability to identify manual or repetitive processes and improve them through scripting, Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, CI/CD, or other repeatable solutions.
• Ability to apply security, access control, change management, documentation, validation, and operational readiness practices when delivering infrastructure changes.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting data platforms, analytics infrastructure, ETL/ELT systems, reporting platforms, data lakes, data warehouses, or high-throughput database environments.
• Experience building reusable infrastructure patterns, self-service workflows, automated runbooks, service catalog items, observability capabilities, Kubernetes/container platforms, or other internal platform capabilities.
• Experience using AI-assisted engineering tools for scripting, documentation, troubleshooting, testing, incident triage, or change planning while protecting sensitive data.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of platform solutions that meet organizational outcomes and non-functional requirements.
• Contribute to reference architectures and review designs for reliability, performance, and cost.
• Investigate complex issues, conduct root-cause analyses, and implement preventative patterns and guardrails.
• Collaborate with developers and clients to deliver solutions on Windows and Linux platforms, including .NET-based workloads.
• Manage and improve the organization’s engineering toolchain, including source control, CI/CD, packaging, and artifact management.
• Design and operate solutions across AWS, a second cloud such as Azure or GCP, and on-premises environments.
• Engineer resilient hybrid connectivity and data services, such as transit gateways, private link, SD-WAN, and applicable SAN/NAS/NVMe-oF solutions.
• Recommend workload placement based on performance, cost, compliance, and latency, and document decision records.
• Implement consistent identity, secrets, and policy patterns across cloud and data center environments.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code and configuration management to create repeatable, auditable environments.
• Use AI copilots and agents to support scripting, documentation, testing, incident triage, and change planning, validating their outputs.
• Build or integrate AI-powered internal tools such as chatops, knowledge retrieval, and automated runbooks with appropriate logging and guardrails.
• Promote safe AI practices, including data classification, prompt hygiene, redaction, and auditability.
• Define and track SLIs and SLOs for owned platforms and build actionable alerts and dashboards.
• Perform capacity planning, performance engineering, resilience testing, and disaster recovery exercises.
• Apply security practices such as least privilege, encryption, patching baselines, and policy-as-code in collaboration with Security and Risk.
• Provide tier-3 support, participate in on-call rotations, and improve incident response through automation.
• Create reusable modules, images, and patterns for adoption by other teams.
• Lead working sessions, brown bags, and Communities of Practice to share knowledge and improve standards.
• Optimize platform cost and efficiency through practices such as rightsizing, autoscaling, reservations, and lifecycle policies, and share outcomes.
• Mentor systems engineers and provide technical coaching, code and design reviews, and onboarding support.

Benefits

• Medical benefits
• Dental benefits
• Vision benefits
• 401K retirement plan
• Paid time off
• Annual bonus, incentives, and other employment-related benefits may be available

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior