Infrastructure Systems Architect
JOB SUMMARY
This position is responsible for researching, assessing, designing, implementing, and operational transition of new technologies and techniques across the organization. Mentors, coaches and guides other engineers and administrators to address complex technical matters that require proactive strategies and in-depth evaluation. Leads major technical projects and delivers short- and long-term technological solutions.
IDEAL CANDIDATE
Our ideal candidate has advanced through various infrastructure positions and has developed significant domain expertise in multiple disciplines. The culmination of your developed skill-sets and project delivery has given you the foundation and experience required to drive complex future-state infrastructure projects at PERA. The ideal candidate enjoys working with teammates, learning and sharing together, to deliver and complete successful initiatives within the Infrastructure team for the betterment of PERA, and ultimately, the support of our membership and their futures.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS
- Identify and develop creative ways to solve issues, new solutions, and ensure production readiness for complex systems. Thoughtfully and practically introduce concepts and technologies and are able to actively share your knowledge and seek opportunities to teach others
- Ability to utilize troubleshooting skills to solve pressing issues across a broad range of technologies and business processes, looking ahead to provide robust solutions that are consistently successful across multiple dimensions, including confidentiality, integrity, availability, authenticity, and nonrepudiation
- The architecture you design and implement does not rely on you personally, and is robust, particularly against single points of failure in terms of both systems and people. You understand technological tradeoffs, implementation timeframes, and on-going support issues that inform your decisions
- Accountable for documentation of large projects, ensuring others not originally involved in implementing your solutions, are able to provide support and disaster recovery
- Training and sharing your domain expertise with others is enjoyable to you, which helps them support solutions you have designed and implemented
- Foster vendor relationships for technology and applications at PERA and evaluate contract pricing
- You naturally choose the most critical technical challenges in your path, and establish yourself as a primary, accountable party for organizational success when introducing and implementing major new applications and technologies
- Assist in the development of widely used policies, standards, procedures, and guidelines resulting in strong credibility throughout PERA for yourself and the team
QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems, Computer Science or related field and 10+ years’ experience implementing and managing enterprise solutions. Additional equivalent work experience may be substituted for the degree requirement
- History of team leadership and the ability to combine multiple technologies into your architectures and solution roadmaps to effectively move to future technology states, with special care given to transitioning new solution implementation to operations
- Experienced member of a cloud adoption team responsible for enterprise solution architectures, including infrastructure implementation, networking, security, identity management, and disaster recovery. Familiarity with Microsoft Azure Cloud Adoption Framework and associated Azure Migrate assessment, security and governance tooling and VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) is an advantage
- Extensive experience with VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform including ESXi hypervisor, vCenter, vSAN, vRealize Operations, Horizon, and NSX infrastructure design and deployment
- Skill designing and implementing hybrid cloud integrations of VMware VDI and server environments, including comprehensive IaaS design and TCO considerations. Familiarity with Veeam, or comparable backup solution, immutable cloud storage, versioning, encryption, backup, and replication
- Prior or current network architecture experience designing, configuring, and maintaining data center equipment, security, and IP networks, including firewalls, routers, switches, and sub-netting
- Experience with encrypted data center interconnect to public cloud, SD-WAN, SIP/Voice failover and QOS, and IaaS based VMware cloud security, compute, storage and networking solutions are all differentiators
WORKING CONDITIONS
- Standard office environment with frequent computer use
- Required occasional on-call assistance outside of normal business hours
JOB DESCRIPTION DISCLAIMER:
This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of an employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or new ones may be assigned with or without notice.
WORK FROM HOME OPTION
- Opportunity to work from home up to two days per week. Eligibility dependent upon factors detailed in PERA's Work from Home Policy.
INTERESTED CANDIDATES
Complete the employment application online at https://www.copera.org/careers. Please have copies of your resume and cover letter available to upload. Please review the following questions. You will be asked for a response to these as part of your application:
- When considering a recent IaaS cloud initiative, briefly describe the objectives, expatiate on your role within the team, and summarize the completion of the effort.
- When transitioning a new technological solution to day-to-day support and operations, expound upon your involvement in preparing for the hand-off, including any planning, artifacts, or tactics you found helpful.
- What do you consider presents the most risk of compromise to infrastructure and how would you mitigate that risk?
- If you could only be involved in one infrastructure discipline (e.g. networking, security, virtualization, etc.) what would that be and why does it hold your interest?
- What do you most enjoy, either personally or professionally, and why?
ABOUT COLORADO PERA
As Colorado’s largest public pension plan, we are committed to providing retirement and other benefits to more than 600,000 current and former teachers, State Troopers, corrections officers, snowplow drivers, and many other public employees who provide valuable service to all of Colorado.
We hire exceptional employees and invest in their growth and development. We are passionate about our work and committed to serving our members by delivering quality customer service, sound investment decisions, and education programs. Our culture is built on the core values of integrity and accountability, excellence and initiative, collaboration, and engagement. We value diverse perspectives and recognize that our people are our primary asset. We provide a healthy work-life balance and a culture where excellence is rewarded. At PERA, your work makes a difference every day.
At PERA, you will earn more than just a paycheck - our total rewards package is focused on wellbeing. We offer a comprehensive benefit plan including Health, Dental and Vision coverage, with eligibility for most plans being the first of the month following the date of hire. We offer a generous paid time off plan as well as paid volunteer hours, PERA’s defined benefit plan, 401(k) and 457 defined contribution plans (including employer match on the 401(k), as applicable), tuition assistance, on-the-job training, free access to an on-site fitness center, free on-site parking or RTD subsidy, and more. For more information, please visit www.copera.org/careers.
Position Title: Infrastructure Systems Architect
Division: Information Technology
Reports to: Infrastructure Manager
Job Status: Full Time, Exempt
Salary: $121,740 - $153,000 per year, commensurate with experience
Posting Dates: 10/8/2021 - 10/24/2021