Job Summary
The U.S. Department of Census is seeking a highly skilled and experienced Virtualization Engineer to join our core infrastructure team. This position is responsible for the design, implementation, and operational management of the critical virtualization platforms that support the nation's most important statistical programs.
The ideal candidate will be an expert in VMware vSphere environments and possess proven proficiency in a multi-vendor ecosystem, including Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VM, and Red Hat Virtualization (RHV). You will manage complex, multi-cluster environments across several data centers, ensuring the high availability, security, and performance of mission-critical systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Primary Platform Management (VMware):
- Design, deploy, configure, and maintain a large-scale VMware vSphere (ESXi & vCenter) infrastructure across multiple data center clusters.
- Manage vSphere high-availability (HA), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), and vMotion configurations.
- Implement and manage disaster recovery (DR) solutions using VMware SRM and vSphere Replication.
- Perform capacity planning, performance monitoring, and resource optimization for all VMware clusters.
- Secondary Platform Management (Hyper-V, Oracle, Red Hat):
- Perform analysis of alternatives to include Microsoft Hyper-V clusters, including SCVMM, Oracle VM (OVM), and Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) platforms, planning for interoperability and stability.
- Operations and Support:
- Serve as a senior escalation point for all virtualization-related incidents, performing root cause analysis and implementing corrective actions.
- Conduct regular patching, updates, and security hardening of all hypervisor hosts and management systems in accordance with NIST and FISMA guidelines.
- Collaborate with storage, networking, and application teams to provision resources and troubleshoot complex, multi-tiered application issues.
- Develop and maintain comprehensive system documentation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and infrastructure diagrams.
- Automate routine tasks using scripting tools such as PowerShell, PowerCLI, or Ansible.
- Participate in an on-call rotation for 24/7/365 operational support.