Our client is looking for a Sr. Storage Engineer for a full time Direct Hire opportunity in the Chicago area.

The Storage Engineer Senior is directly responsible for the engineering and operations of the global infrastructure and must be willing to provide 24x7 day-to-day operations support of the firm’s Storage and backup environment. Resolve complex issues related to storage performance, capacity and availability. Manage escalation of issues to other third-level support teams and vendors. Proactively monitor storage and backups for stability and performance issues and perform regular reporting of storage metrics for capacity planning purposes. Provide solutions engineering and design as well as drive implementation standards for the distributed storage and backup environment.

The Senior Storage Operations Engineer must develop processes to manage the storage and backup environment to improve overall system reliability and end-user experience. Identify and lead opportunities to drive change and innovation, evolving the infrastructure and end user experience towards best-in-class from a functionality, supportability, reliability, and availability standpoint. Work hand in hand with the Architecture team and provide input into the overall strategy for storage and backup technologies. They must have a BA/BS in computer science, related field, or equivalent experience. Must have 9+ years of overall technology experience along with 5+ years supporting major implementations of Netapp storage in large scale VMWare and MS SQL environments. Ability to provide 24x7 support via pager for Storage and Backup issues on a rotating schedule. Able to respond to calls within hour and access the system via a firm-provided laptop within 1 hour when on-call. Availability to work nights and weekends as required for systems maintenance and support.

Job responsibilities include: •Ensure consistent and professional delivery of superior quality services, cordial interpersonal communications, timely responses to requests for service and support, adherence to departmental policies, accurate and consistent use of Help Desk tracking and reporting software. •Establish an overall production maturity strategy and execute plan for evolving current infrastructure environment towards best in class from a supportability, reliability and availability standpoint. •Serve as an escalation point for Storage and backup related outages, problems and requests •Provide input to the Storage Operations team budget. •Develop production operational metrics to track continuous achievement and improvement of incident, change, problem and risk management. •Define, document, encourage use of, and evolve departmental Best Practices based on industry and organizational standards. •Maintain business relationships with vendors of hardware, software, and related services critical to the efficient operation of the department. •Actively collaborate with other members of Technology Services in pursuit of service delivery excellence.

Additional requirements include: •Storage technology certification (Netapp Certified Data Management Administrator (NCDA) and the SNIA Certified Storage Engineer (SCSE) a plus •Solid understanding of Netapp storage platform, Snap Mirror, Snap Drive, Snap Vault, Deduplication, Data Replication, Commvault Galaxy •Experience supporting large Microsoft Windows file sharing and NAS implementations •Solid understanding of Microsoft Windows Server operating systems and technologies on either physical or virtual platforms such as VMWare (VDI), Hyper-V, or App-V •Knowledge of scripting and automation techniques •Proven ability to develop, implement, and communicate best practices for Storage in a large, global organization. •Have worked with and adhered to Change Control Management policies and implementation standards •Strong attention to detail and an ability to think through the implications of specific deployment decisions. •Ability to multi-task and work in a fast-paced environment. •Excellent written communication skills and the ability to build consensus across different stakeholders. •A team player with a positive attitude and excellent interpersonal skills. •Ability to work on complex problems where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth evaluation of various factors.