Virtualisation Admin Lead

Role Purpose

This role will report to the Head of IT Infrastructure CTIO and help with providing support to systems, infrastructure and end-users as required by the business.

Your role will be to design, build, enhance, monitor and maintain the IT Infrastructure VMware ecosystem which includes the EXA Infrastructure VMware ESX and Oracle VM Server estates of physical servers and virtual machines hosted on ESX and Oracle Virtualisation environments ensuring the smooth day-to-day running of EXA's IT Infrastructure of VMware and Oracle VM in compliance with IT governance and security policies. The EXA IT Infrastructure Virtualisation admin lead role also includes design and implementation of Virtualisation system upgrades of VMware ESX, vSphere, Oracle Virtualisation, Oracle Linux Virtualisation Manager, Oracle VM/KVM administration, Security hardening and compliance, automation for patching & proactive management, Virtualisation distributed clusters and snapshot management, The role also has the requirement of strong experience of VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Director, vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN, VMware NSX-T Data Center, VMware HCX, VMware Site Resilience, Data Centre Server management for Oracle VM/VMware ESX hosts & Windows/Linux VMs management. The role has strong skill requirement for VMware PowerCLI command-line as scripting tools built on Windows PowerShell, for managing and automating VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Director, vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN, VMware NSX-T Data Center, VMware Cloud Services, VMware Cloud on Azure, VMware HCX, VMware Site Resilience.

The IT Infrastructure team combines technical l3 level specialists for IT Infrastructure Systems Engineering including skills of Microsoft Windows/Azure/MS365, Linux, VMware, Storage, Backup, etc.., with end-to-end responsibility to manage operations of all IT Infrastructure estate in EXA's data centres fully up and running to avoid outages, and in the case of an outage, work swiftly to resolve and restore any affected systems.

This role is required to have high skilled hands-on experience in the delivery of the IT Infrastructure services as mentioned above in areas of Virtualisation administration and scripting, including assisting with business-users' issues and managing systems as well as managing the team and associated vendors

Key responsibilities

• Providing technical direction and ownership for the IT Infrastructure Virtualisation team members. If needed Line management may also be required to be performed for a small team of engineers.
• Providing specialist systems admin and development expertise with the VMware ecosystem including but not limited to VMware/Oracle VM/Intra and Inter Data Centre migrations/Automation/Security configuration/ PAM/IDM technologies.
• Delivering hands-on operations of the systems admin for the Virtualisation estate for the company
• Identifying and applying opportunities for team training and skills advancement.
• Managing and reporting under the IT Infrastructure budget/spend
• Maintaining and updating patching, system upgrades, updates across the EXA's IT Infrastructure Virtualisation estate including physical hypervisor servers such VMware ESX/Oracle VM, virtual machines in DCs and cloud, servers, etc., along with security vulnerability management while working with Rapid7, Cybersecurity solution Crowdstrike, PAM solution CyberArk..
• Lead technically with internal and/or vendor teams the design and delivery of IT Infrastructure projects based on Virtualisation estate including physical or virtual including system design, build, migrations, upgrades, transformations, go-live and operations while ensuring security and segmentation standards compliance with systems like CyberArk, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Tufin, NSX, etc.
• Providing senior management with visibility and reports on end-to-end service management of all VMware/Oracle VM estate including storage and backup solutions.
• Identifying areas for continuous improvement and lead technically the implementation of all ITIL processes including incident, problem and changes once approved by management under EXA CAB as well as ticket & service request management processes.
• Provide business users and end-users complete support with team for issues escalated from the IT helpdesk and/or NOC and/or NMS Application teams for any/all VMware/Oracle VM solutions including areas covering application integration, storage/data stores/backup failures, etc.
• Lead the technical implementation and operations management of IT Infrastructure monitoring with automated alert management covering all areas of services such as space/performance/memory, regular patching of hypervisor servers/platforms/software/virtual machines as and when required.
• Regular health checks on all IT VMware/Oracle VM systems, addressing any issues discovered vendor management for al technical management, escalation management of all incidents keeping senior management updated and aware fully. .
• Developing and documenting new processes to streamline IT Infrastructure operations.

Individual Profile

• Strong experience of relevant Level 3/4 technical experience and skills/expertise in an IT team technical lead/specialist/consultant role,
• Demonstrable examples of managing small or medium IT project deliveries with leading teams while owning end-to-end management of design, delivery in a dynamic, fast-moving environment.
• Experience and specialisation with supporting (but not limited to) the following: VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Director, vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN, VMware NSX-T Data Center, VMware Cloud Services, VMware Cloud on Azure, VMware HCX, VMware Site Resilience and Oracle Virtualisation Manager, Oracle VMs, the associated ecosystem of servers, virtualisation estate, applications, security solutions, storage & backup solutions
• Experience with using and integrating servers with clients of cybersecurity technologies such as Rapid7, Zscaler, CyberArk, CrowdStrike, etc.
• Experience with ManageEngine products such as Patch Manager, ServiceDesk Plus, Endpoint Central, ADManager Plus, etc.
• Good relationship building skills, communications and customer orientation, as this role involves interactions with and providing services to all business teams and with companies employees at a larger scale.

Our working environment

We are committed to working in the location where we do our best work.  As a fast-growing and expanding company with great offices in great locations, our company has a flexible hybrid working solution with mostly employees aiming to be in the office 1-2 days while rest of days working from home/ other locations. 

Here at EXA, we believe the future includes everyone, we are open to all applications to create an environment and culture that includes one and all. We are a proud global community, that wants to drive diversity of thought though our employees and culture. We want you to come as you and make yourself and EXA successful.