VMware Migration Engineer- Irvine, CA

Cystems Logic Inc•Irvine, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Senior VMware Migration Engineer leads the migration of virtual machine estates between VMware environments — moving workloads out of legacy or shared infrastructure into hardened, security-segmented target platforms. This is deep infrastructure work in complex enterprise data centers: you'll map the source environment, untangle the network and firewall dependencies that determine what can move and when, and execute waves without disrupting production. The role is equally about the plan and the execution. You'll build detailed migration plans and present them to client leadership, then work shoulder-to-shoulder with the customer's VMware, network, and security teams to get every wave through change control and across the wire cleanly.

Requirements

8+ years in enterprise virtualization and data center infrastructure, with deep hands-on VMware experience.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, or similar.
VMware Certified Professional (VCP) required
Demonstrated experience migrating VM estates between VMware infrastructures at enterprise scale, including moves into more restrictive or security-hardened target environments.
Deep vSphere expertise — vCenter, ESXi, clusters, HA/DRS, vDS, storage (vSAN, VMFS/NFS, SAN), and VM lifecycle management.
Hands-on experience with migration tooling — HCX, cross-vCenter vMotion, VMware Converter, and replication-based methods.
Strong NSX experience — distributed firewall rule analysis, security groups and tags, micro-segmentation, and T0/T1 routing.
Ability to read complex firewall rule sets, trace policy impact on application traffic, and translate policy accurately into a target environment.
Solid enterprise networking fundamentals — VLANs, overlays/VXLAN, routing, load balancing, and DNS.
Experience building detailed migration plans and presenting them to senior client leadership.
Proven ability to work across client VMware, network, and security teams and drive alignment.
Experience operating within formal change management and maintenance-window discipline.
Scripting for automation and validation — PowerCLI required
Strong troubleshooting skills under production pressure, and excellent documentation.

Nice To Haves

advanced-level certification (VCAP Deploy or Design)
Python
Experience in regulated or high-security environments (PCI, HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP)
Familiarity with cloud migration paths (VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS MGN)

Responsibilities

Assess complex source VMware environments — vCenter inventory, cluster and host topology, resource pools, storage layout, and VM dependencies.
Map application and infrastructure dependencies to determine migration groupings, sequencing, and blast radius.
Build detailed migration plans with wave definitions, cutover windows, prerequisites, validation criteria, and rollback procedures.
Present migration plans, progress, risks, and go/no-go recommendations to client leadership and steering forums.
Drive change management — submit and defend change records, coordinate maintenance windows, and secure approvals across teams.
Execute VM migrations between VMware infrastructures — vMotion, Storage vMotion, cross-vCenter vMotion, cold migration, HCX, and replication-based approaches as appropriate to each workload.
Prepare target environment for incoming workloads — clusters, resource pools, datastores, port groups, tagging, and VM policy alignment.
Handle VMware Tools and hardware version upgrades, guest OS remediation, and post-migration validation.
Troubleshoot migration failures under live change windows — network reachability, storage latency, replication issues, and vCenter or host-level faults.
Validate application health, performance, and connectivity post-cutover; drive issues to closure with application owners.
Analyze NSX-T/NSX-V configurations — distributed firewall rules, security groups and tags, segments, T0/T1 routing, and micro-segmentation policy.
Determine which firewall rules, security tags, and policies must be translated, recreated, or tightened in the target environment, and confirm they take effect before cutover.
Partner with client network and security teams on segmentation design, routing, VLAN and overlay changes, and rule validation.
Identify and resolve connectivity breaks caused by policy mismatch between source and target environments.
Document the resulting network and security state for audit and hand-over.
Produce runbooks, migration playbooks, architecture and network diagrams, and hand-over documentation.
Serve as the technical point of contact for the customer's VMware, network, and security teams throughout the engagement.
Track and report wave progress, blockers, and risk to both technical and executive audiences.