Virtualization / Automation Engineer (Senior)

Computer World Services•North Chicago, IL

2d•$140,000 - $170,000•Remote

About The Position

Computer World Services, Corp. (CWS) is seeking a Senior Virtualization / Automation Engineer to design, operate, secure, automate, and modernize the virtualization and Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) platforms supporting the USMEPCOM ENLIST program. The platforms include VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Site Recovery Manager (SRM), and associated Infrastructure as Code capabilities. The role owns the hypervisor and SDDC platform layers across production, development, test, COOP, disaster-recovery, and hybrid-hosting environments. Guest operating systems, applications, databases, and cloud workloads remain owned by their respective teams. The engineer will also support applicable service transitions to centralized DISA-hosting platforms, including discovery, migration planning and support, validation, and stabilization. This is a remote position, with Chicago, Illinois–area candidates preferred. Occasional on-site support, after-hours maintenance, disaster-recovery exercises, incident response, and travel may be required. An active Secret clearance or higher is required. The period of performance is March 1, 2027, through February 28, 2033, with a contract start date of March 1, 2027. Applicants acknowledge and consent to having their resume included in an active competitive Government contract bid. The posted salary range is $140,000–$170,000 per year. The offered rate depends on the selected candidate’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience, and on internal parity.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience where permitted by the labor category.
At least eight years of relevant experience in virtualization, systems engineering, data-center infrastructure, platform engineering, or infrastructure automation.
Hands-on experience with VMware vSphere, ESXi, and vCenter, and with vSAN, NSX, SRM, or comparable software-defined storage, network-virtualization, and disaster-recovery technologies.
Experience developing or maintaining infrastructure-automation solutions and troubleshooting complex issues across compute, storage, network, virtualization, and automation layers.
Knowledge of high availability, disaster recovery, backup and restoration, capacity management, and lifecycle practices.
Strong written, verbal, analytical, and technical problem-solving skills.
Active Secret clearance or higher.

Nice To Haves

Formal Terraform and Ansible training.
Experience with VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware Aria, and PowerCLI, PowerShell, Python, or REST APIs.
Experience supporting federal or DoD virtualization environments and migrations to DISA enterprise-hosting platforms.
Experience with DISA STIGs, RMF controls, vulnerability remediation, and configuration compliance.
Experience developing Infrastructure as Code within CI/CD and Git workflows with automated testing and code scanning.
Preferred certifications include VMware Certified Professional, VMware Certified Advanced Professional, HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation, ITIL 4 Foundation, or relevant cloud, security, storage, or network certification.

Responsibilities

Serve as senior engineering owner for the SDDC platform, establishing architecture, configuration standards, operational procedures, and engineering roadmaps.
Build, configure, and optimize virtualization clusters, including vSphere HA, DRS, resource pools, hosts, datastores, and distributed switches; manage ESXi and vCenter patching, upgrades, and certificates.
Monitor platform capacity, availability, performance, and compliance, and recommend scaling, balancing, or remediation actions.
Engineer vSAN clusters, storage policies, and fault domains; troubleshoot performance, resynchronization, and policy-compliance issues.
Engineer NSX segments, transport zones, gateways, routing, and distributed security controls, coordinating changes with network and cybersecurity teams.
Administer SRM protection groups and recovery plans; develop and maintain automated failover and failback procedures; support quarterly COOP exercises and continuity events.
Design and implement infrastructure automation using Terraform, Ansible, PowerCLI, or APIs, incorporating version control, peer review, testing, rollback, secrets protection, and drift detection.
Coordinate with workload owners on resource requirements, placement, templates, and snapshots while preserving the division between platform and workload ownership.
Provide Tier 4 engineering support for cross-platform incidents, isolate platform faults during outages, conduct root-cause analyses, and develop corrective actions.
Maintain platform configuration backups; apply DISA STIGs and security baselines; support RMF evidence, vulnerability remediation, and vendor-advisory reviews.
Support technology refreshes and modernization by developing platform roadmaps, technical options, and rough-order cost estimates.
Support DISA-hosting transitions through discovery, dependency documentation, readiness assessment, migration waves, test and rollback plans, cutover, and post-migration stabilization.
Maintain architecture diagrams, as-built documentation, SOPs, and recovery procedures, and provide platform metrics and modernization status for program reporting.