Systems Engineer at World Vision Kenya

Key Responsibilities:

Systems Engineers are responsible for maintaining, monitoring, and supporting systems in a global environment. They develop secure and highly available global cloud computing platforms, working on multiple projects as team members or advisors on projects that have system-wide impact and integrate across the organization. They also perform troubleshooting for complex hardware, software, or network problems.

Systems Engineers are responsible for developing and operating secure and highly available global cloud computing platforms. They design, install, maintain, and upgrade the enterprise systems operating environment. They are responsible for the infrastructure's reliability, performance, and support. This includes monitoring systems, responding to problems, and planning for growth.

Individuals in this role design and build the systems infrastructure hosted on a multi-cloud platform to meet business requirements, which include servers, storage, backups, and automation. They maintain a secure systems environment by installing/maintaining security applications, managing access control mechanisms, and assigning user IDs and passwords to authorize systems access. Other responsibilities include providing operations support 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, to maintain reliable and available infrastructure systems.  They analyse alerts, diagnose system failures, take corrective action, and document findings and resolutions. Systems Engineers implement and monitor system backup and restore processes, including performing disaster recovery tests.

System Engineers must have good communication skills and be able to effectively engage with system users and technical colleagues at all levels of the organization. Employees in this role demonstrate leadership competencies by directing project planning, consulting on complex technical solutions, and collaborating across all functional areas of the enterprise. Engineers possess a strong customer service orientation, ensuring all requests and problems are resolved professionally. They lead others during incidents, share their expertise with team members, and provide individual training.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES

PROJECT PLANNING:

• Leads or consults in short- and long-term project planning efforts with team members, clients and other IT groups. Develops cost/time estimates. Documents discussion and agreements.
• Project plans and timelines support the achievement of desired short and long-term results.

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS:

• Works with business analysts and clients to understand business needs.
• Clear understanding of business needs to ensure technical requirements meet those needs.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Determines requirements impact on existing architecture, work processes and systems.  Works with impacted areas to ensure proper communication / review of requirements and integration. Determines infrastructure systems specifications, input/output processes and working parameters for hardware/software compatibility.
• Identification of issues regarding impact of and integration with existing architecture, processes and systems.

DESIGN/DEVELOP:

• Analyses, designs, develops, and documents systems to meet business requirements. Coordinates design of subsystems and integration with larger systems.
• May coordinate development activities with other groups.
• Systems designs meet business requirements.
• System solutions are integrated with other applications and platforms.

MAINTENANCE:

• Performs routine maintenance tasks for infrastructure systems such as backups, patch management and hot fixes.
• Assists in establishing requirements, methods and procedures for routine maintenance.
• Maintenance performed for assigned systems in compliance with defined procedures.
• Minimum down time for assigned infrastructure systems.

BUSINESS PROCESS:

• Assists in the business process redesign and documentation as needed for new technology.
• New technology supported by documented business processes.

ADMINISTRATION:

• Installs, configures, and maintains system hardware and software components. Maintains tracking and configuration documentation and plans. Validates configurations.
• Users have access to systems, servers and files.
• Infrastructure systems are maintained for optimal performance.

PERFORMANCE MONITORING:

• Ensures performance meets the present and future needs of the business. Forecasts utilization patterns and identifies modifications or upgrades. Recommends changes/ enhancements for improved systems availability, reliability and performance.
• Required system-operating capacity is available to meet user demand.
• Analysis and recommendations for improvements for systems availability, reliability and performance.

TESTING:

• Designs, plans and leads testing efforts and coordinates feedback of test results. Develops cases test files. Conducts testing to ensure requirements are met.
• Systems meet the needs of the business.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTS:

• Recommends performance metrics. Analyses operational metrics to understand performance and to ensure success in process improvements.
• Continual process improvement for optimal system performance.

COMPUTER OPERATIONS:

• Assists in establishing requirements, methods and procedures for routine operational processes.
• Operational processes provide desired results.

PRODUCTION SUPPORT:

• Provides Level 3 production support. Diagnoses escalated problems or escalates when needed.  Investigates alternative methods to expedite problem resolution. Recommends procedures and controls for problem resolution or creates temporary solutions until permanent solutions can be implemented. Researches, analyses, and recommends the implementation of software or hardware changes to rectify any problems. Reviews checklists and scripts.
• Identification of cause and fix for problems.
• Issues resolved efficiently and effectively to minimize disruption to users.
• Analysis and recommendations for performance improvements.

SECURITY:

• Makes recommendations to improve security and participates in investigations as needed. Adheres to security requirements.
• Continual improvement to security.
• Issues investigated and resolved.
• Adherence to security requirements

BUSINESS CONTINUITY:

• May participate in the implementation of contingency plans including reliable backup and restore procedures. Participate in the identification of vulnerabilities and their mitigation. Verifies that system backups run successfully.
• Implementation of recovery procedures that ensure business continuity.

POLICIES, PROCEDURES, AND STANDARDS:

• Supports and helps establish systems environment standards. Works with auditors, security groups, and data owners to make sure of governance, regulations, and compliance to policies and procedures. Defines procedures for user access to systems environment. Maintains system operating procedures and documentation.
• Compliance to established policies, procedures and standards.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS (SLAs):

• Assists in developing SLA’s.

DOCUMENTATION/USER GUIDES:

• Documents new or modified functions, modules, test activities/results and other areas such as error handling and backup/ recovery procedures. Ensures all documentation is delivered according to specified guidelines and on selected media. Proofreads documents for accuracy.
• Required documentation developed and accurate.

COMMUNICATIONS/CONSULTATION:

• Supports and participates in the formal reporting of project status. 
• Communication of project status.

COACHING/MENTORING:

• Provides coaching and guidance to team members.
• Knowledge transfer and guidance to team members.

RESEARCH/EVALUATION:

• Evaluates future technologies and makes recommendations.
• Understanding of future technologies and potential impact to the business and/or IT.
• Recommendations for systems solutions that support business requirements.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree or technical institute degree/certificate or equivalent work experience. 
• Requires at least 5+ years administering servers in an enterprise environment. 
• Requires at least 5+ years of experience designing, configuring, and deploying server hardware. 
• Typically requires 5-7 years of relevant information technology work experience. 
• Minimum two (2) years of experience with Azure IaaS, PaaS 
• Minimum two (2) years of Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant administration/global scope
• Microsoft Azure relevant certifications (e.g., AZ104, AZ500, AZ800)
• ITIL v3 or v4 certifications  
• MCP, MCITP, MCSA, MCSE, VCP  
• Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2022  
• Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally. 

GOOD-TO-HAVE

• Proven project management skills. 
• Strong background in networking protocols and functions; System analysis and troubleshooting skills. 
• Strong oral and written communication skills. 
• Experience working with Azure technologies: Azure Compute, Storage, Networking, Load balancers, Azure Firewalls, NVAs, Azure policy, Express route, Azure Backup, Azure Security Centre, Azure Apps Service, Azure SQL, Azure logic apps, Azure Service bus, Azure Log Analytics, Azure Monitor; Experience with identity management, role-based access controls, privilege identity management, and a deep understanding of core security concepts and processes as they relate to securing cloud technologies; Experience writing Python and Windows PowerShell 
• Experience in Azure or AWS management; Experience managing advanced Hypervisor/VMWare clusters. 
• Experience managing a Cloud infrastructure; Experience with OS security involving Active Directory, Windows Networking, Group Policies, DNS, PKI & Certificates; Experience with backup system architectures; Experience with integration of systems. 
• Experience with Azure Conditional Access, EMS E3/E5, MCAS, Azure Sentinel, Azure Service Management (ASM) and Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure Storage Metrics 
• Experience working with some or all of these SysOps/DevOps/Automation technologies: Azure DevOps, Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible, CloudFormation, Chef, Puppet 
• Experience in Containerization – Dockers and Kubernetes