Senior Systems Administrator

Senior Systems Administrator

Location (Hybrid) : Boston or Marlborough, MA

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Systems Administrator to own and operate the virtualization and internal infrastructure platform that powers Nasuni’s Engineering organization.

This role is responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, automation, and observability of our enterprise VMware environment (100+ hosts across multiple clusters), CI/CD infrastructure, log aggregation systems, and the hardware stack supporting development workloads.

This is a deeply hands-on infrastructure role for someone with strong VMware expertise and advanced Infrastructure-as-Code capabilities (Packer, Terraform, Ansible) who can modernize systems through automation while maintaining production stability.

This is not a management role. It is a senior individual contributor position with clear domain ownership.

Level & Scope Definition

• Owns the Engineering virtualization and internal infrastructure platform end-to-end.
• Operates with high autonomy within defined infrastructure boundaries.
• Makes technical decisions for virtualization, storage, automation, CI/CD infrastructure, and observability tooling.
• Leads lifecycle management including upgrades, patching, capacity planning, and reliability improvements.
• Designs and implements infrastructure-as-code standards and reusable automation frameworks.
• Owns CI/CD execution environments (Jenkins agents, GitHub Actions runners).
• Owns log aggregation and monitoring infrastructure.
• Partners cross-functionally with Engineering, DevOps, and IT.
• Drives modernization within scope but does not define company-wide infrastructure strategy.

Core Responsibilities

Virtualization & Infrastructure Ownership

• Administer and optimize VMware vCenter across 100+ hosts and multiple clusters.
• Manage Dell PowerStore backend storage and ensure high availability.
• Maintain internal Linux and Windows VM environments.
• Oversee physical hardware lifecycle management for virtualization platforms.
• Perform lifecycle upgrades, patching, and performance tuning.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation (Critical)

• Design and maintain reusable Infrastructure-as-Code frameworks using Terraform.
• Build and maintain automated VM image pipelines using Packer.
• Develop configuration management workflows using Ansible.
• Standardize and version infrastructure definitions across environments.
• Reduce manual operational tasks through automation and orchestration.

CI/CD Platform Ownership

• Own and optimize CI/CD execution infrastructure (Jenkins agents, GitHub Actions runners).
• Improve reliability, performance, and scalability of build pipelines.
• Troubleshoot pipeline execution failures tied to infrastructure constraints.
• Partner with engineering teams to integrate infrastructure automation into workflows.

Observability & Log Aggregation

• Own and maintain log aggregation and monitoring platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK, or equivalent).
• Ensure system visibility across compute, storage, and CI/CD workloads.
• Implement performance dashboards and alerting standards.
• Drive improvements in system observability and incident detection.

Reliability & Operational Excellence

• Ensure disaster recovery readiness and high availability.
• Lead root cause analysis for infrastructure incidents.
• Improve system hardening and security posture.
• Maintain documentation and operational standards.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 7+ years of Systems Administration or Infrastructure Engineering experience.
• Demonstrated ownership of large-scale VMware environments (multi-cluster, 50+ hosts minimum).
• Strong production experience with Terraform, Packer, and Ansible.
• Experience designing reusable Infrastructure-as-Code modules and automated image pipelines.
• Production experience supporting CI/CD platforms (Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
• Experience implementing or maintaining log aggregation or observability platforms.
• Strong Linux systems administration experience.
• Experience managing high-availability production environments.
• Strong troubleshooting and root cause analysis capabilities.
• Ability to independently manage complex infrastructure domains.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Dell PowerStore or enterprise storage platforms.
• Production Kubernetes or container orchestration experience.
• Experience supporting internal developer platforms.
• Networking experience (switching, fabric, datacenter networking).
• Experience integrating observability into CI/CD pipelines.
• Hardware lifecycle and datacenter operations experience.

Ideal Qualifications

• Designed automation frameworks adopted across engineering teams.
• Reduced infrastructure-related CI/CD failures through platform optimization.
• Implemented centralized log aggregation strategy improving MTTR.
• Led virtualization modernization initiatives with measurable impact.
• Delivered automation reducing operational workload by 25%+.

Experience Guidelines

• 7–12+ years total experience in infrastructure or systems administration.
• 5+ years operating VMware or enterprise virtualization platforms.
• 3–5+ years hands-on Terraform and Ansible usage in production.
• 2+ years building automated image pipelines using Packer.
• Experience managing infrastructure supporting active CI/CD workloads.

Why work at Nasuni?     

As part of our commitment to your well-being, we are pleased to offer comprehensive benefits packages to employees across the US.  Benefits packages generally include:     

• Best in class employee onboarding and training 
• "Take What You Need” paid time off policy 
• Comprehensive health, dental and vision plans 
• Company-paid life and disability insurance 
• 401(k) and Roth IRA retirement plan 
• Generous employee referral bonuses 
• Flexible remote work policy 
• 10 Paid Holidays 
• Wide array of wellbeing offerings 
• Pre-tax savings accounts with company contributions 
• Great team culture and social activities 
• Collaborative workspaces 
• Free on-site fitness centers and stocked kitchens in select office locations 
• Professional development resources 

Compensation Transparency: 

In accordance with U.S. pay transparency laws, Nasuni is committed to providing visibility into compensation for all U.S.-based roles. Click HERE to view our compensation ranges by job grade. Actual compensation will be based on a variety of factors, including a candidate’s experience, skills, education, and work location.

To all recruitment agencies: Nasuni does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our job boards, Nasuni employees or any other company location. Nasuni is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

Nasuni is an equal opportunity employer. The equal employment opportunity policy at Nasuni protects employees and job applicants from discrimination on the bases of race, religion, color, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, family medical history or genetic information, political affiliation, military service, or other non-merit based factors. These protections extend to all management practices and decisions, including recruitment and hiring practices, appraisal systems, promotions, and training and career development programs.

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